New York
CNN
—
A trove of text messages, emails and other material from Fox News executives and on-air personalities was made public Tuesday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the right – wing channel.
Among the hundreds of pages of unreleased documents are repeated statements from Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch rejecting conspiracy theories about Dominion promoted by his own network after the 2020 election. And Internal Fox News emails and messages — also made public Tuesday — further show how Fox News staffers privately rejected some of the election conspiracies promoted on air.
Dominion alleged in its lawsuit that during the 2020 presidential election the right-wing talk channel “recklessly ignored the truth” and pushed various pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theories about the technology company in election because “lies are good for Fox’s business.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Fox News accused Dominion of distortions, misinformation and misattribution of quotes as part of an attempt to “damage Fox News and trample on freedom of speech and freedom of the press. ”
Dominion on Tuesday said, “the emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves.”
“We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all points to the same place — Fox knowingly spread lies that caused significant damage to an American company,” Dominion said.
In a January deposition, Murdoch rejected conspiracy theories about Dominion, according to a transcript of his deposition released Tuesday.
“Do you believe that the Dominion is engaged in a massive and coordinated effort to steal the 2020 presidential election?” Murdoch was questioned by Dominion’s lawyers.
“No,” Murdoch replied.
“Have you seen any credible evidence to suggest that the Dominion is engaged in a massive and coordinated effort to steal the 2020 presidential election?” the Dominion lawyer pressed.
“No,” Murdoch replied.
“Do you believe that the Dominion is engaged in a massive and coordinated effort to steal the 2020 presidential election?” asked the Dominion attorney.
“No,” Murdoch replied.
“You don’t believe that Dominion is involved in an effort to delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump, do you?” asked the Dominion attorney.
“I am open to persuasion; but, no, I haven’t seen it yet,” replied Murdoch.
Hundreds of pages of new documents emerged Tuesday include previously unreleased excerpts from key depositions, including Murdoch’s, and part of Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
Fox News has denied wrongdoing and said a judge must resolve the case favorably before it goes to trial, which is scheduled for next month in Delaware.
In messages from November 2020, former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs asked producer John Fawcett what he thought of a recent lawsuit filed by Sidney Powell seeking to overturn the election in 2020.
“It’s complete,” Fawcett replied, according to court filings made public Tuesday. “I can’t believe that’s the kraken,” he added, referring to the phrase Powell has used to describe the incompetent lawsuits he’s filed across the country.
Dobbs was one of the most prominent on-air proponents of Powell’s conspiracy theories related to Dominion and the 2020 election before his show was canceled in February 2021.
Additionally, shortly after the 2020 election, Fox News host Tucker Carlson acknowledged that Powell was not telling the truth.
According to a court filing released Tuesday, Carlson told an unidentified number on November 17, 2020, that “Sidney Powell is lying” and called him an expletive.
More than a month after the 2020 election, Fox News DC Managing Editor Bill Sammon criticized the network’s coverage of election fraud claims of a colleague’s private messages, fearing it was a “existential crisis” for the right-wing channel.
“More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening newscast and we’re focused solely on alleged election fraud — a month after the election,” Sammon wrote to political editor Chris Stirewalt. “It’s amazing how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”
Stirewalt responded, “It’s a real mess.”
The messages are part of hundreds of pages of documents released Tuesday in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News. (The network has denied wrongdoing.)
“In my 22 years with Fox, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to an existential crisis — at least journalistically,” Sammon said.
“What’s most concerning is that there doesn’t seem to be much conflict,” Stirewalt said.
“What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of the audience as we chase nuts off a cliff,” Sammon replied.
Both men, Sammon and Stirewalt, left the company in early 2021.
Murdoch said in a January 2021 email that two of his top TV hosts may have “been too much,” in an apparent reference to their reluctance in the election after Donald Trump lost.
“Maybe Sean and Laura are too far apart,” Murdoch wrote in an email, referring to Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. “It’s fine for Sean to tell you that he’s disappointed about Trump, but what is he telling his viewers?”
Murdoch sent the email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on January 21, 2021, the first full day of President Joe Biden’s administration. The email also mentioned the ongoing impeachment proceedings against Trump.
In the email, Murdoch asked Scott if it was “indisputable that the high-profile voices at Fox were feeding the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th (was) a key opportunity to overturn the result”?
Later, Scott sent the question to Irena Briganti, Fox News’ senior vice president for corporate communications, asking for a specific answer. Briganti responded with more than 15 pages of transcript excerpts from Fox hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin.
The Dominion case is one of two separate lawsuits brought by voting technology companies against Fox News that jointly seek $4.3 billion in damages, posing a serious threat to the lucrative arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Fox News not only vehemently denied the claims, it insisted it was “proud” to be covering the 2020 election.
Recent court filings in the Dominion case offer the clearest picture yet of the chaos unfolding behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election.
In a particularly damaging admission revealed in the lawsuit last month, Murdoch acknowledged that several Fox News hosts endorsed the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged.
“They endorsed,” Murdoch said, referring to Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs.
“Some of our commentators have endorsed it,” he said, when asked about the talk host’s on-air positions on the election. “I want us to be stronger in criticizing it, in perspective,” he added.
In his deposition, Murdoch also acknowledged that it was “wrong” for Carlson to host election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell on his program after the presidential contest.
Fox has defended the actions of its executives and hosts in its own legal filings against Dominion’s lawsuit, saying its hosts’ statements about election fraud were taken out of context.
“Dominion’s summary judgment motion is flawed from top to bottom and should be dismissed in its entirety,” Fox News’ lawyers wrote in a filing last month.
And Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, said Dominion “has produced zero evidentiary support for the dubious theory that high-level executives at Fox Corporation ‘chosen to publish and broadcast’ or had a ‘direct role in the creation and publication’ of the false election fraud.”
While the First Amendment sets a high bar for defamation lawsuits brought against media outlets, a protection strengthened in the landmark 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, legal experts told CNN that Dominion’s case appears unusually strong.
“This is a huge blow,” prominent First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams said of Dominion’s evidence presented last month, adding that the “recent revelations certainly put of Fox in an extremely dangerous situation” to defend against the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.
Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School, described Dominion’s evidence as a “very strong” case that “clearly delineates the difference between what Fox said in public and what he said in private.” top people at Fox admitted.”
Tushnet said that in his years of practicing and teaching law, he had never seen such damaging evidence collected at the pre-trial stage of a defamation case.
