Dominion Voting Systems has produced evidence that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rupert Murdoch and plenty more at Fox all knew the smears about Dominion Voting Systems were a lie but perpetuated them anyway.
A nearly 200-page legal brief from Dominion seeking summary judgment in its $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News is full of jaw-dropping information about how top people at the network knew that it was pushing lies about the 2020 election.
From The New York Times:
Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.
The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.
…
The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.
…
On Nov. 12, in a text chain with Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Hannity, Mr. Carlson pointed to a tweet in which a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, fact-checked a tweet from Mr. Trump referring to Fox broadcasts and said there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion.
“Please get her fired,” Mr. Carlson said. He added: “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Ms. Heinrich had deleted her tweet by the next morning.
I plan to read the brief this morning and will post more as warranted.
Meanwhile, you can read the entire brief here, courtesy of The Times. There are many redactions in the brief which, The Times says, "contain more revelations about deliberations inside the network" that Fox wants to keep sealed. One can only imagine how much more damning those might be. The Times and National Public Radio are challenging those redactions in court.
2/17/23 update: I'm still reading and digesting the brief. Boy, does it have the receipts! I hope to post more tomorrow.
(image via screen grab)
It’s increasingly believable that Dominion put all its ducks in a row before moving against FNC. Even if they eventually settle, it’s agonna hurt.
Compare Benghazi (Benghazi!, Benghazi!) with the ‘left behind’ cock-up in Niger.
