Dominion Voting Systems documents were released in their $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox Corp and its cable TV networks, Fox News and Fox Business.
According to court documents filed Thursday, Dominion claims that Fox executives wouldn’t allow Donald Trump on air after the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He called into Lou Dobb’s show, but his appearance was vetoed.
“Fox refused to allow President Trump on air that evening because ‘it would be irresponsible to put him on the air’ and ‘could impact a lot of people in a negative way,’” the filings said.
The evidence seems to show that Fox News’ top anchors, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, expressed disbelief in the claims of fraud against Dominion that it rigged the election. The anchors, in particular, doubted fraud claims by pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell and Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Ingraham said in a message to Carlson: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” the documents state.
Fox and its networks have strongly denied the claims. In Thursday’s court papers, Fox Corp said it had “no role in the creation and publication of the challenged statements – all of which aired on either Fox Business Network or Fox News Channel.”
A lot of noise
Fox News stated in court papers that it “fulfilled its commitment to inform fully and comment fairly” on the claims that Dominion rigged the election against Trump.
“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox said in a statement.
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Dominion said in court papers that Fox and its hosts felt pressure from the audience backlash on the 2020 election night when it called the state of Arizona for Biden. That pressure was evident in text messages between Fox’s top personalities in the weeks following the election.
The night before Jan. 6, Rupert Murdoch told Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, “It’s been suggested our prime time three should independently or together say something like ‘the election is over, and Joe Biden won,’” according to court papers. He added that saying so “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election was stolen.”
On the evening of Jan. 6, Carlson texted his producer, calling Trump “a demonic force. A destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us,” court papers show.
That sounds out of context. A lot of this is out of context.
Dominion has a long list of alleged false claims by Fox TV hosts. They assert that what they said in private didn’t match what they said on air.
The trial is scheduled for mid-April.
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