New York (CNN) Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, acknowledged in a deposition taken by Dominion Voting Systems that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Murdoch’s remarks were made public in a legal filing as part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News.
In his deposition, Murdoch denied that the right-wing talk network as an entity endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election lies. But Murdoch admitted that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs promoted lies about stealing the presidential race.
“Some of our commentators have endorsed it,” Murdoch said, according to the filing, when asked about the hosts’ on-air positions regarding the election. “I would like us to be stronger in criticizing it, in thinking,” he added.
The filing also revealed that Murdoch referred to some of Trump’s 2020 election lies as “bulls**t and damaging.”
Fox calls Dominion case ‘suspicious’
In a statement on Monday, Fox News attacked Dominion.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what will withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” the network said, “as they now describe being forced to cut their imaginary damages demanded of more than half a billion dollars after themselves. The expert rejected its incredible claims.”
“Their summary judgment motion takes an extreme, unsupportable view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly challenge Fox for covering and commenting on the allegations of a sitting President of the United States should recognize this for what it is: a flagrant violation of the First Amendment,” the network added.
Fox on Monday defended the actions of its executives and hosts during the 2020 election in its own legal filings against the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. Fox said its hosts’ statements about election fraud were taken out of context.
Fox said it should not be liable for the hosts’ claims.
“Dominion’s summary judgment motion is flawed from top to bottom and must be dismissed in its entirety,” Fox News’ lawyers wrote in its filing Monday.
Fox Corporation said in its filing that Dominion “has produced zero evidentiary support for the dubious theory that Fox Corporation’s high-level executives ‘preferred publishing and broadcasting’ or had a ‘direct role in creating and publishing’ false election lies.”
Fox hosts mocking claims of election fraud
In another filing made public earlier this month, dozens of messages and emails from Fox News’ most popular stars and highest-ranking executives show they privately scoffed at the cheating claims. in the 2020 election, despite the right-wing channel promoting lies about the presidential contest on its air.
The messages show Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham brutally mocking the lies pushed by former President Donald Trump’s camp claiming the election was rigged.
Court filings offer the clearest picture yet of the chaos unfolding behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rebelled against the right-wing channel for correctly calling the contest in favor of Biden.
Top legal experts told CNN after last week’s filing that Dominion’s legal position appears strong.
“This is a huge blow,” noted First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said of Dominion’s motion for summary judgment, 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” filing that “clearly outlines the difference between what Fox said publicly and the top people at Fox privately 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.
“I don’t remember anything that compares to this,” Tushnet said. “Donald Trump seems to be very good at creating unprecedented situations.”
Murdoch said it was ‘wrong’ for Tucker Carlson to host election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell
In his deposition, Murdoch also said it was “wrong” for Fox’s Tucker Carlson to host election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell on his program after the presidential election.
Murdoch testified that it was “wrong for Tucker to host Mike Lindell to repeat the allegations against Dominion on January 26, 2021,” the documents state.
When asked why he continued to allow Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, to make election fraud claims on Fox News, Murdoch said it was a business decision.
“It’s not red or blue, it’s green,” Murdoch replied, according to court documents.
“The man is there every night. We pay a lot of money … “said Murdoch. “At first you think it’s a comic, and then you get overwhelmed and angry.”
Murdoch also said he may bar Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, former lawyers for President Trump and his campaign who have accused him of election fraud, from appearing on the network’s programs, the filing said. .
“I could. But I didn’t,” said Murdoch.
Paul Ryan warns Murdochs, Fox to stop spreading false election narratives
Court documents on Monday show that Paul Ryan repeatedly warned Murdoch and Fox News of the dangerous consequences of discussing false accounts of election fraud on air with viewers.
Ryan, the former House speaker and a Fox Corporation board member, has repeatedly been told by Rupert and Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch that the company “shouldn’t be spreading conspiracy theories.”
On at least one occasion, Ryan advised the Murdochs that the company should “move away from Donald Trump and stop spreading election lies.”
During this time, Ryan told the Murdochs that many of those who thought the election was stolen “because they got a diet of information telling them that the election was stolen from what they believed to be reliable sources.”
“The sooner we can get down the obvious lies from our side, the faster we can get principled loyal opposition,” Ryan wrote to Rupert. “I really hope our contributors, along with Tucker, Laura, and Sean get that and implement it.”
Rupert responded to Ryan, saying “everything changed” after the events of January 6, 2021, and asked the former speaker turned Fox executive for suggestions for contributors.
Murdoch gave Kushner ‘confidential information’ about Biden ads
Dominion’s filing also revealed that Rupert Murdoch gave Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, “confidential information about [President Joe] Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy” in 2020, “gave Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were made public,” the court filing said.
Murdoch, under oath, also said that on election night, Kushner called him upset about media coverage of the election that was ultimately called for Biden. Murdoch testified that Kushner said, “this is terrible” and Murdoch “could hear Trump’s voice in the background screaming.” Murdoch said he replied, “Well, the numbers are the numbers.”
According to the filing, Murdoch said he believed there was no fraud in the election.
“Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up. I think that was shown when we announced Arizona,” Murdoch said, referring to Fox News’ projection on election night that Joe Biden would win the critical battlefield state. .
A spokesman for Kushner did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.
– CNN’s Liam Reilly and Nicki Brown contributed to this report