A court hearing has revealed that Sean Hannity said, under oath, that he did not believe “for one second” the “stolen election” lies he was promoting on prime time. And he’s not the only one.
The New York Times reports that on Wednesday, the lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems revealed in court some of the evidence they have obtained in the company’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit.
Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.
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One lawyer for Dominion said that “not a single Fox witness” so far had produced anything supporting the various false claims about the company that were uttered repeatedly on the network. And in some cases, other high-profile hosts and senior executives echoed Mr. Hannity’s doubts about what Mr. Trump and his allies like Ms. Powell were saying, according to the Dominion lawyer, Stephen Shackelford.
This included Meade Cooper, who oversees prime-time programming for Fox News, and the prime-time star Tucker Carlson, Mr. Shackelford said.
“Many of the highest-ranking Fox people have admitted under oath that they never believed the Dominion lies,” he said, naming both Ms. Cooper and Mr. Carlson.
I’ve previously written that Dominion appears to have a strong case against Fox. In fact, a First Amendment expert told 60 Minutes the case is “much stronger than most defamation cases that I have seen. ... I might say it is the strongest."
You can watch that October 23, 2022 60 Minutes segment below. It’s a deep dive into the case for those not familiar with it.
The Dominion trial is scheduled to begin in April.