Fox News subject to defamation law suit over voting machines

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News website
12 Mar 2023 18:09

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a billion-dollar lawsuit alleging that Fox News promoted former president Donald Trump's false claims about the latter.

A headline about President Donald Trump is displayed outside Fox News studios in New York on Nov. 28, 2018 (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a billion-dollar lawsuit alleging that Fox News promoted former president Donald Trump's claims that the latter's equipment was used to distort the 2020 election results, according to AFP.

Dominion's lawyers have uncovered company communications including private messages, texts, and emails from top Fox News figures revealing what commentators and executives felt about former President Trump.

"We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights... I truly can't wait," Tucker Carlson wrote to his team on Jan 4, 2021, before Trump supporters stormed the US capitol Hill.

Few individuals at the network seemed to believe Trump's claims that the election had been "stolen," according to the internal Fox News records and emails uncovered by Dominions' lawyers.

But, they kept their opinions to themselves and allowed controversial figures supporting that theory to appear weekly on Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson's prime-time shows.

Fox News has described the Dominion lawsuit as a "flagrant attack on the First Amendment", AFP reported.

Fox News contended that the Trump camp's right to a platform was legitimate, and allowing both sides to do so was "important for the search for the truth," accusing Dominion of "cherry-picking"

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, urged on Wednesday the leadership of Fox Corporation to stop calling into question US President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential race.

Back in November, Rupert Murdoch chairman of Fox News announced that he will not endorse Donald Trump's return to the White House.

Murdoch’s media empire, which includes conservative channel Fox News, flagship paper The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post, labeled Trump a loser responsible for putting the Republicans into “one political fiasco after another”.