Fox lawsuit documents show Murdoch admitted several hosts backed Trump’s claims of fraud

Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire conservative media mogul who owns the Fox News channel, admitted that his leading networks backed former President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, court documents filed on Monday show.

Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Murdoch and Fox Corp. for libel and seeking $1.6 billion in damages, pressed Murdoch directly when they toppled him over whether some of the network’s widely watched opinion anchors supported Trump’s unproven claims.

“Actually, do you know now that Fox sometimes supported this false notion of a stolen election?” one of Dominion’s lawyers asked Murdoch during his deposition, the court document shows.

“Not Fox, no. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria as commentators,” Murdoch replied.

“Some of our commentators supported it,” the media mogul added, when asked again if Trump’s leading statements about election fraud were supported. “Yes. They approved.”

The filing filed by Dominion on Monday is the latest chapter in a high-profile lawsuit in which the voting systems company alleges Fox senior management, including its top anchors and executives, defamed Dominion by airing false statements spread by Trump. and his associates for several weeks. after the 2020 elections

Fox has so far unsuccessfully attempted to dismiss the case on First Amendment grounds, and in its own filing Monday claimed it was simply broadcasting noteworthy comments from the president and his senior associates. Under Dominion’s defamation standard, Fox lawyers argued in their filings, the company could sue virtually every media company in the country for covering Trump’s claims.

“The Dominion lawsuit has always been more about what will make headlines than what can stand legal and factual scrutiny, as evidenced by the fact that they are now forced to cut their bizarre damage claims by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert has refuted his implausible claims, the network said in a statement Monday evening.

“Their petition for summary judgment contained an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from doing basic reporting, and their attempts to publicly vilify FOX for covering and commenting on the allegations of the incumbent President of the United States must be recognized as such, what they are: a flagrant violation of the First Amendment,” the statement said.

The Dominion filed a separate lawsuit last week, containing pages of text messages, emails, and testimonies that described how Fox senior management and anchors were questioning Trump’s claims, and worried about how fact-checking his statements on air could be accepted by conservatives. media audience.

Among them was main host Tucker Carlson, who Dominion claims clashed with pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, saying, “You keep telling our viewers that millions of votes have been altered by software. I hope you prove it soon. You convinced them that Trump would win. If you don’t have conclusive evidence of a scam of this magnitude, continuing to talk about it is cruel and reckless.”

The Dominion document also includes excerpts from the testimony of former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who sits on the Fox Corp. board of directors. and advised the Murdochs in the post-election period.

Ryan told Dominion’s attorneys that he knew “these conspiracy theories were unfounded” and that Fox “should try to dispel the conspiracy theories if and when they surface,” according to the statement.

Ryan said he thought “there should be a list of all the claims and then all the evidence or confirmation or refutation of those claims.” [election fraud] allegations are for viewers only”, and wrote to Murdoch after the election that “Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.”

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On January 5, 2021, the day before the deadly attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, Dominion alleges that Murdoch wrote to Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott stating: “It has been suggested that our three of us go to prime time separately or together said something along the lines of “the election is over and Joe Biden won” and that such a move “would go a long way in dispelling Trump’s myth that the election was stolen.”

A jury trial in the case is expected to begin in April.

Updated at 18:23

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