Wilmington, Del. (CNN) A former Fox News producer who claims the right-wing network forced him to give false testimony has filed his own lawsuit against the company, adding CEO Suzanne Scott as a defendant and accusing its lawyers of Fox to delete the messages from his phone.
In explosive lawsuits filed last month, Abby Grossberg claimed Fox lawyers bullied her into defending the network and its on-air personalities during her deposition for the Dominion Voting Systems case.
Grossberg now accuses Scott of complicity in the alleged coercion, according to her amended lawsuit.
Fox News previously said his lawsuits were “riddled with false allegations” and said its lawyers never acted improperly.
The network fired Grossberg after he initiated the litigation.
Grossberg worked for Maria Bartiromo during the 2020 election cycle, and some of the comments made on Bartiromo’s show are at the center of Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox, where jury selection began Thursday in Delaware . The network said it did not defame Dominion and that Dominion’s lawsuit undermines press freedom in the US.
In Grossberg’s amended complaint filed this week, he accused Fox’s lawyers of deleting messages from his phone. The lawsuit alleges that Grossberg gave her phone to Fox lawyers in 2022, and “that certain messages between Ms. Grossberg and Ms. Bartiromo were lost/appear to have been deleted” when she retrieved the device from the Fox’s team.
The subject of potentially lost or suppressed evidence loomed large in the Dominion case. A judge cleared Fox on Wednesday for withholding key material from Dominion — audio recordings of Bartiromo talking off-air with Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
Maria Bartiromo – Taping (Official Music Video) Maria Bartiromo – Taping (Official Music Video)
Fox said it never withheld any evidence from Dominion, and Fox’s lawyers told the court Wednesday that they only knew Grossberg made the recordings when he mentioned them in his lawsuits. recent weeks.
In response to Grossberg’s new allegations, a Fox spokesperson said in a statement: “As our attorney explained to the court, we are aware that there may be responsive audio recordings of for the first time on March 20 from Grossberg’s errata sheet. Our attorneys then accessed forensic images of Grossberg’s phone and reviewed the recordings, made within 15 days of first learning of their existence.”
The right-wing network criticized Grossberg for adding Scott as a defendant, calling it a “publicity stunt” in a statement released Friday.
“Suzanne Scott never had any contact with Abby Grossberg while she was an employee and had nothing to do with her preparation for the deposition,” a Fox spokeswoman said.
Dominion said it plans to call Grossberg as a witness as part of its case against Fox News.
Scott, the Fox News CEO, is expected to testify at the trial.
Emails made public in the Dominion case reveal that Scott said in 2020 that it was “bad for business” for Fox News reporters to dismiss Donald Trump’s false claims that the presidential election was rigged. (Fox News said these emails were taken out of context by Dominion in its court filings.)
Scott was also on the receiving end of emails from Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, in which he criticized Trump’s denial of the election and blamed Trump for the January 6 uprising.
— CNN’s Oliver Darcy contributed to this story
