An email from a Fox News producer, arguing that Jeanine Pirro’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election should keep her off the air, has been obtained by Dominion Voting Systems as part of the discovery phase of its $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox.
From NPR’s David Folkenflik, who says NPR was the first to publicly disclose the email:
The role of Pirro - a former New York state judge and Westchester County district attorney - remains under sharp scrutiny. In 2019, Trump called for her return to the airwaves after the network publicly condemned her anti-Muslim remarks. In 2020, she attended Trump's belligerent address late on Election Night from the White House and advanced his arguments on the air in the days and weeks that followed.
On Nov. 14, 2020, for example, the day that Biden clinched his victory, Pirro questioned why vote counts shifted against Trump over the course of Election Night in such states as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. (Some counties were counted later than others; ballots cast the same day were often tallied before those cast by mail.) "The Dominion Software System has been tagged as one allegedly capable of flipping votes," Pirro told viewers, as she promoted Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell's "findings" on Dominion. (A federal judge in Michigan later officially sanctioned Powell for her actions in court on Trump's behalf after the elections, while the Texas state law bar is seeking to have her formally punished.)
Pirro was among those Fox hosts with increasingly tough talk ahead of the January 2021 certification of Biden's election win. On Jan. 3, 2021, Pirro compared those gathering to protest in Washington with Trump to the American soldiers in the Revolutionary War, adding, "Jan. 6 will tell us whether there are any in Congress willing to battle for America." That day led to bloody battles at the U.S. Congress. As one of his last acts in office, Trump pardoned Pirro's husband for two-decades-old convictions for tax evasion.
The email seems to have been leaked to NPR by someone on the Dominion team. Folkenflik writes that Dominion and Fox have “clashed” lately over Dominion’s efforts to compel Pirro to testify about “private texts, that, it argues, are relevant to its defamation case.” According to The New York Times, Pirro has already been deposed at least once.
Folkenflik also reports that settlement “does not currently appear likely, according to several people with knowledge of the litigation.”
Of course, that could change, especially if something crucial turns up in discovery. I’ve written previously that settlement probably depends on how huge a settlement Fox is willing to pay and whether the network would be willing and able to issue the kind of massive mea culpa and apology that Dominion would feel sufficiently rehabilitates its tarnished-by-Fox image.
I'm not a lawyer so I don't know how important the email about Pirro would be deemed to the case but it is another piece of evidence that Fox knew it was promoting election lies and didn't care.
Stay tuned!
(Pirro image via screen shot)
