Rupert Murdoch did not believe the 2020 election was ‘stolen,’ despite what you heard on Fox News

While Fox News guests and hosts presented former President Trump’s false allegations that voter fraud led to his loss in the 2020 election, network executive Rupert Murdoch didn’t believe a word of it.

Testimony released Tuesday revealed that Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corp., did not address any of the theories pushed by Trump’s legal representatives and surrogates on his conservative news network.

Fox News is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems in a $1.6 billion defamation case alleging the network deliberately lied about fraud claims to boost its ratings. Murdoch was impeached on January 19 in the case.

A transcript showed that when Murdoch was asked by Justin Nelson, one of Dominion’s attorneys, if “the 2020 election wasn’t free and fair,” the mogul’s answer was, “No.”

“Do you believe that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president of the United States?” asked Nelson.

Murdoch said yes.

“It is false that President Trump’s election was stolen; correct?”

“It wasn’t stolen,” Murdoch replied.

“Do you believe President Trump was a sore loser?”

“Yes,” Murdoch replied.

Murdoch gave the same negative answer when asked about the various charges against Dominion by guests and hosts appearing on Fox News.

Dominion was falsely accused by Trump’s team of using his vote-rigging machines to throw the election at Joe Biden. Trump representatives also said without evidence that the Denver-based maker of voting machines was under the control of the Venezuelan government.

Fox News claims its reporting and commentary was protected by the First Amendment because allegations of a sitting president are newsworthy, even if they are false.

Dominion will have to prove to a Delaware court that Fox News acted maliciously by recklessly ignoring the truth in reporting Trump’s claims and the false allegations against Dominion.

Dominion’s motion for summary judgment — which cites testimony from depositions and internal communications at Fox News — notes how executives, producers and anchors expressed concern over what Trump support guests and anchors like Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and former Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs said of the false claims.

In his statement, Murdoch admitted that Dobbs, Bartiromo and other hosts fueled the unsubstantiated allegations against Dominion.

Many described statements by Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani as “crazy” and “crazy”.

But they continued to appear on the network to promote untruths in the weeks leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot, when Trump supporters tried to stop the electoral vote count.

In his statements, Murdoch acknowledged that he had the power to stop Giuliani and Powell from appearing on Fox News, but chose not to. Murdoch said he was aware of antagonizing Trump-supporting Fox News viewers who were angry about the election result. Fox News was the first network on election night to call Arizona for Joe Biden.

Trump “had a very large following and it was probably mostly Fox viewers, so it would have been silly,” Murdoch said in his testimony.

A jury trial is scheduled for April 17.