Rupert Murdoch, Fox News Hosts Saw Donald Trump’s Election Fraud Claims As “Crazy” And “B.S.,” Dominion Says In Defamation Filing; Network Calls Lawsuit “An Assault On First Amendment”
deadline.comFox News hosts and executives, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, did not believe Donald Trump’s election fraud claims in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, but the network nevertheless amplified the conspiracy theories as it worried about losing viewers to Newsmax, according to filings from Dominion Voting Systems made public on Thursday.
In its motion for summary judgment in its $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox, with a redacted version made public on Thursday, Dominion makes heavy use of text messages and emails from the Fox personalities and staff to contend that the network was well aware that claims made by guests such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani were bogus. (Read it here). “Really crazy stuff,” Rupert Murdoch wrote in a Nov.
19 text about Giuliani, according to the filing. Dominion’s lawsuit is over claims, made on air by Powell, Giuliani and others, and then advanced by Fox News figures like Lou Dobbs, that it was involved in rigging the results of the 2020 election.
Dominion contends that many at the network knew the claims were false, but executives and hosts worried of losing Trump-supporting viewers if Fox News called them out as unfounded.
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