New court documents show that Rupert Murdoch and his top lieutenants at Fox News knew former President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false, but agreed to give them continued coverage in an effort to prevent the unhappy viewers would flee.
The astonishing revelations based on witness statements were in
a letter filed Monday in Delaware State Court by Dominion Voting Systems, the latest salvo in the company’s $1.6 billion defamation suit against the conservative news network.
In his statement, Murdoch acknowledged he had the power to prevent Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell from appearing on Fox News, where they spread misinformation about election fraud and falsely accused Dominion of using his machines to manipulate votes. But he chose not to exercise that power, even though he and others knew behind the scenes that Trump’s legal team was spreading lies and even questioned their sanity, the statement said.
When asked if he could have told Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott and the network’s hosts to “stop airing Rudy Giuliani,” Murdoch replied, “I could have. But I didn’t.”
Fox News has maintained that the coverage and commentary on Trump’s false accusations were newsworthy and therefore protected under the First Amendment.
The filing also shows that Fox Corporation board member Paul Ryan warned the Murdochs “that Fox News should not spread conspiracy theories,” according to the former Republican Speaker of the House.
“We are entering a really bizarre phase where (Trump) has actually convinced himself of this farce and will do more bizarre things to illegalize the election,” Ryan told the Murdochs. “I see this as a major turning point for Fox, where the right thing to do and the smart business thing to do align nicely.”
The court document also shows how network executives debated debunking Trump’s false claims without agitating viewers, some of whom flocked to start the conservative network Newsmax, which was far more sympathetic to the untruths.
On January 5, Murdoch and Scott discussed whether hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham should say a version of “The election is over and Joe Biden won.” Murdoch believed those words “would go a long way in stopping the Trump myth that the election was stolen.”
Scott told Murdoch that “in private they’re all there,” but “we have to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers.”
No statement was made that night, and the next day, January 6, Trump-supporting rioters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the electoral vote count.
Dominion filed a motion for summary judgment on Feb. 16 outlining how Fox News hosts and executives privately rejected voter fraud claims and now found evidence to support them, but continued to give a platform to their programs to Trump attorneys and surrogates who presented wildly bogus accusations.
Pushing the case forward exposes the inner workings at Fox News through texts, emails and witness statements, painting a picture of an operation that panicked about how Trump supporters in the public would leave the network.
This is an evolving story
