Here’s What Fox Is Accused Of Lying About In Defamation Lawsuit Over 2020 Election

Topline

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is testifying Thursday and Friday in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News, a billion-dollar lawsuit that has ensnared some of the network’s biggest personalities over repeated statements after the 2020 election that falsely linked Dominion machines to fraud—including comments by both Fox News personalities and guests.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 10, 2018 in … [+] Sun Valley, Idaho.

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Key Facts

Dominion alleges in its lawsuit, which a Delaware state court allowed to move forward in December 2021, that Fox News and its anchors repeatedly and knowingly pushed false claims that linked Dominion voting machines to election fraud as a tactic to boost ratings, despite Dominion sending repeated letters to the network contesting its claims.

The network “made, endorsed and accepted” false claims about Dominion machines, the lawsuit alleges, through repeated interviews on its programs with far-right Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who pushed the Dominion fraud claims without anchors challenging them.

Powell told Maria Bartiromo there was “a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election” and “manufacture votes for Joe Biden,” told Sean Hannity the company “ran an algorithm that shaved off votes from then-President Donald Trump and awarded them to Biden” and claimed to Lou Dobbs that Trump’s “lead was so great … they had to stop the counting and come in and backfill the votes they needed to change the result,” according to the lawsuit.

Giuliani claimed in December on Fox & Friends that Dominion machines “[were] developed to steal elections, and being used in the states that are involved,” and he and Powell both repeatedly pushed false claims that linked Dominion machines to rival company Smartmatic—which has also sued Fox News—and claimed the company has ties to Venezuela, which it does not, the Dominion suit notes.

Fox anchors also asserted false election claims on the network themselves, Dominion alleges: Jeanine Pirro asked, “Why was there an overnight popping of the vote tabulation that cannot be explained for Biden?”, for instance, and Dobbs said Dominion machines were part of “the most ludicrous, irresponsible and rancid system imaginable in the world’s only superpower” and Trump “has to take, I believe, drastic action, dramatic action” to combat it.

In addition to claims made on the network, Dobbs also tweeted a two-page document that claimed “there was an embedded controller in every Dominion machine, that allows an election supervisor to move votes from one candidate to another” and described the purported voting machine conspiracy as a “cyber Pearl Harbor.”

Tucker Carlson, who Dominion notes initially said on-air there was no election fraud that changed the results, brought on MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for an interview in January 2021, and Lindell claimed he “ha[s] all the evidence” to prove fraud with Dominion machines and the voting company “hired hit groups, bots and trolls” to “go after” him.

Chief Critic

Fox News has disputed Dominion’s claims and maintained comments made on the network were not defamatory, arguing they’re covered under the First Amendment and the network and its anchors were reporting on matters of public importance. “We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs,” the network said in a statement to Forbes Tuesday.

Big Number

774. That’s the approximate number of statements made on Fox News that challenged the election results or asserted claims of election fraud in the two weeks after Biden was declared president-elect, according to an analysis by left-leaning media watchdog MediaMatters that Dominion cited in its lawsuit.

Contra

Dominion’s lawsuit acknowledges that Dobbs said on air on January 4, 2021, that “we still don’t have verifiable tangible support” to prove election fraud involving voting machines, and “we have had a devil of a time finding actual proof.” The Fox Business host, whose show was canceled a month later, did not change his tune on election fraud, however, saying, “The fact of the matter is that this President is looking at the prospect of having this election stolen from him.”

What To Watch For

Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox News is scheduled to go to trial in April 2023, according to court documents, and the voting machine company is asking the network to pay $1.6 billion in damages for its alleged defamation. Fox also faces a separate defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, which a court allowed to move forward in March. Dominion has also brought a separate case against the Fox Corporation directly that focuses on Rupert and son Lachlan Murdoch’s alleged involvement in pushing election fraud claims on Fox News, which is also now pending after a court rejected Fox’s motion to dismiss the case in June.

What We Don’t Know

What Murdoch will say when he’s deposed. The News Corp. chair was initially slated to be deposed in December via video call, but his testimony was delayed until this week and will now take place in person in Los Angeles, according to court filings in the case. The transcript will not be made public. Dominion’s Fox News lawsuit alleges that even though Murdoch did not personally believe there was widespread election fraud, he was swayed by his personal relationship with Trump and the effect of pushing false election claims on Fox News’ ratings to “nevertheless [encourage] on-air personalities to perpetuate these baseless claims.” The lawsuit alleges Murdoch exerted direct influence over Fox’s programming in the aftermath of the 2020 election, citing media reports from the time that claimed Murdoch had “stepped in to call the shots directly” at the network amid a ratings decline.

Key Background

Dominion sued Fox News in March 2021, one of nine defamation lawsuits the company has brought against companies and figures in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Murdoch marks the most major figure to be deposed thus far in the months-long discovery process leading up to the case’s trial, though Dominion has asked a number of the network’s highest-ranking personalities and officials to testify in court. Among those who have already been deposed are Pirro, Carlson, Dobbs, Hannity, Bartiromo, Lachlan Murdoch, James Murdoch, Shepard Smith, Steve Doocy, Brett Baier, Laura Ingraham and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, along with non-Fox figures like former Attorney General William Barr, court records show. Court records in the case indicate proceedings have become contentious in recent months, as both Dominion and Fox News have asked the court to issue sanctions against the other for allegedly destroying evidence. Dominion alleged that evidence was spoiled by Fox figures including Hannity, Ingraham and Scott, though the full request for sanctions is confidential, so it’s unclear what that evidence may have entailed.

Surprising Fact

A December court hearing in the case suggested that many of the network’s high-ranking anchors and executives have opposed the 2020 fraud claims under oath, though full transcripts of the depositions have not been made public. Dominion’s attorneys said during the hearing that Hannity testified he “did not believe [Powell’s fraud claims] for one second,” and alleged Carlson also doubted the fraud claims, along with Fox News exec Meade Cooper. A Dominion attorney also alleged a Fox Corporation executive had pushed the White House to stop having Powell advise Trump, calling her claims “outlandish.” Dominion argued this was further evidence that Fox Corp, which Murdoch controls, knew the fraud claims were false but had Fox News push them anyway.