The company belonging to a former Republican election official has reportedly bought Dominion Voting Systems. The election vendor, which endured a slew of baseless MAGA conspiracy theories in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, has been acquired by a company called Liberty Vote, according to a press release from the company.
Liberty Vote is a new company that is owned by Scott Leiendecker. Leiendecker, who already owns an electronic poll book company called KNOWiNK, previously worked for the Missouri Secretary of State and later served as the Election Director of the city of St. Louis, Axios reports. In both cases, he was appointed to those positions by Matt Blunt, who—at that time—was Missouri’s secretary of state, the outlet notes. It adds that Ed Martin, who is described as “a loyal Trump surrogate,” chaired the St. Louis Board of Elections at the same time that Leiendecker served as election director.
So what has happened to Dominion? It no longer exists, according to a press release shared with Gizmodo by Liberty Vote. “As of today, Dominion is gone. Liberty Vote assumes full ownership and operational control,” the press release states.
It’s unclear how the company will change under Leiendecker’s leadership, although in statements shared with the press, the executive has offered a hopeful tone. “Today, I am proud to announce Liberty Vote — a 100% American‐owned election technology company dedicated to restoring trust in our elections,” Leiendecker said on the new company’s website. “Our mission is clear: every vote must be secure, fair, and verifiable.” He added: “Our purpose is simple: to ensure that America’s elections are secure, fair, and honest.”
In comments shared in the press release seen by Gizmodo, Leiendecker further stated that Liberty is “committed to delivering election technology that prioritizes paper-based transparency, security, and simplicity so that voters can be assured that every ballot is filled-in accurately and fairly counted.”
The statement’s emphasis on “paper-based” security is notable because President Trump has often demanded America “go back” to using paper ballots. In reality, most of the states in the U.S. already use paper ballots, with machines doing the intitial counting.
As previously noted, Dominion Voting Systems enjoyed a number of hefty financial paydays after it became the target of rightwing conspiracy theories involving the 2020 presidential election. In 2023, Fox News reached a $787 million settlement with Dominion over baseless claims that were spread on the network about election-rigging. Earlier this year, the conservative network Newsmax also agreed to pay $67 million to the company to settle a similar lawsuit. A couple of weeks ago, former New York mayor turned MAGA dope Rudy Giuliani also reportedly reached a settlement with the company as part of its $1.3 billion lawsuit against him. The terms of the settlement were confidential.
Interestingly enough, Axios reports that, as part of the recent acquisition, “Liberty officials asked Dominion to settle several other defamation lawsuits against Trump allies who attacked the company over the 2020 election results.” However, there is at least one person who still seems to be on the hook with the company. Business Insider reported Thursday that the company still appeared to be suing Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy. On Thursday, Lindell told BI that he was “not aware of any offers from Dominion or Liberty Vote to settle their legal disputes.”
Dominion Voting Systems, one of the nation’s largest election technology companies, has been acquired by St. Louis-based Liberty Vote. The acquisition caps a half-decade that saw Dominion thrust into the public eye amid false accusations of election rigging.
Liberty Vote announced the purchase of Dominion Thursday afternoon. The terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.
Liberty Vote was founded by Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican elections director for St. Louis. He also founded KNOWiNK, which describes itself as the largest provider of electronic poll book technology in the United States, used in dozens of states. KNOWiNK says it was built “exclusively in America” and has a bipartisan team of former elections administrators, directors and poll workers, according to a company spokesperson.
In a statement Thursday, Liberty Vote said it would be “100% AMERICAN OWNED,” and that “as of today, Dominion is gone.” Dominion was incorporated in Toronto but in 2009, it moved its headquarters to Denver.
“Liberty Vote signals a new chapter for American elections—one where trust is rebuilt from the ground up,” Leiendecker said. “Liberty Vote is committed to delivering election technology that prioritizes paper-based transparency, security, and simplicity so that voters can be assured that every ballot is filled-in accurately and fairly counted.”
The acquisition marks a significant development in the U.S. election technology industry, bringing together two major players that would provide key infrastructure for voting and voter verification systems across dozens of states ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Dominion provided voting systems in key battlegrounds such as Georgia — a state Biden narrowly won — which became the catalyst for unfounded narratives against Dominion that also led to harassment and threats against election officials in states where they utilized the company’s voting tabulation systems. Dominion spent years fending off claims from President Trump and his allies, who alleged that the company’s machines were manipulated to favor Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
The fallout from those claims led to a series of high-profile defamation lawsuits. In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay nearly $800 million to settle Dominion’s suit, while Newsmax settled for $67 million. The company alleged Fox broadcasted unsubstantiated allegations that Dominion’s software manipulated vote counts. Dominion’s lawsuit highlighted 20 such statements aired on a slew of shows on the network.
Dominion also filed separate cases against Trump allies, including a $1.3 billion lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, which ended in September with an undisclosed settlement. Giuliani was a leading figure in the effort to overturn Mr. Trump’s defeat. The terms of the settlement were not made public.
Rudy Giuliani has reached a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit over his baseless 2020 election-rigging claims.
The two sides said in a filing in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Friday that they have agreed to permanently dismiss the suit against the former New York City mayor and former personal lawyer to President Trump.
The brief filing doesn’t cite the settlement terms. Spokespeople for Giuliani and the Colorado-based Dominion said Saturday that the terms are confidential and declined to comment further.
“The Parties have agreed to a confidential settlement to this matter,” a Dominion spokesperson told CBS News in a statement Saturday.
CBS News has also reached out to representatives for Giuliani for comment.
Dominion sued Giuliani in 2021 for $1.3 billion in damages after he led Mr. Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the 2020 election results.
Conservatives and other Trump supporters blamed the company, one of the nation’s top voting machine makers, for the Republican’s loss to former President Joe Biden.
Many alleged, without evidence, that its systems were easily manipulated. Dominion had provided voting machines for the state of Georgia, a critical battleground that Biden won and which flipped control of the U.S. Senate.
The web of conspiracy theories following the 2020 election not only caused headaches for Dominion but also undermined public confidence in U.S. elections, led to calls to ban voting machines and triggered death threats against elections officials.
But Trump’s former attorney general and others found no widespread fraud in the election.
Fox News also agreed to a nearly $800 million settlement with Dominion in 2023, and another politically conservative network, Newsmax, agreed to a $67 million settlement with Dominion over its election claims.
The company’s suit against Giuliani was based on statements the onetime presidential hopeful made on social media, on conservative news outlets and during legislative hearings in which he claimed the company conspired to flip votes to Biden.
Dominion’s lawsuit was among a series of legal and financial setbacks for Giuliani stemming from his role in spreading election conspiracy theories.
Earlier this month, a New York judge ordered the Republican, once celebrated as “America’s mayor” for his leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to pay $1.36 million in legal fees.
Giuliani, in recent years, has also been disbarred as an attorney in New York and Washington; filed for bankruptcy and reached an undisclosed settlement to keep his homes and belongings after he was ordered to pay $148 million to two former Georgia elections workers he defamed.
On Friday, a federal judge in Minnesota ruled that MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, an ally of President Trump, had defamed the election technology company Smartmatic with false statements that its voting machines helped rig the 2020 election.
The conservative network Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of defaming a Denver-based voting equipment company by spreading lies about President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, according to documents filed Monday.
The settlement comes after Fox News Channel paid $787.5 million to settle a similar lawsuit in 2023 and Newsmax paid what court papers describe as $40 million to settle a libel lawsuit from a different voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which also was a target of pro-Trump conspiracy theories on the network.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled earlier that Newsmax did indeed defame Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems by airing false information about the company and its equipment.
But Davis left it to a jury to eventually decide whether that was done with malice, and, if so, how much Dominion deserved from Newsmax in damages. Newsmax and Dominion reached the settlement before the trial could take place.
The settlement was disclosed by Newsmax on Monday in a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It said the deal was reached Friday.
The disclosure came as Trump vowed in a social media post Monday to eliminate mail-in ballots and voting machines such as those supplied by Dominion and other companies. It was unclear how the Republican president could achieve that.
At about 10 a.m. on Monday, the eve of Super Tuesday, the Supreme Court released its unanimous decision that former President Donald Trump was eligible to appear on the 2024 Colorado election ballot. Shortly after this news broke, Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, posted on social media that she was “disappointed” in the Court’s ruling, and that, in her view, the justices were stripping states of their authority to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Sitting in her downtown-Denver office yesterday afternoon, Griswold showed me some of the DMs she’d received over the previous 24 hours. “Well, one of the things—you probably don’t want to print this—is I’m being called a cunt every two minutes,” she said.
Griswold read a selection of the messages out loud—a mixture of angst, anger, sadness, and resolve in her voice. “Karma will be a bitch … Build gas chambers … We are on to you … Reap what you sow … Hope you choke and die … Fuck you, ogre bitch … I’m coming … Resign now before I get you … Kill yourself in the name of democracy … Set yourself on fire ...”
Her eyes wide and intense, she was the image of a person on high alert: Strangers had been able to get ahold of her personal cellphone number. Messages of this nature had been coming in for a while. In one saved voicemail from her office line that she played for me, a caller told Griswold that he hopes “some fucking immigrant from fucking Iran cuts her kids’ heads off” and “somebody shoots her in the head.” His monologue lasted more than a minute and a half and concluded with a warning: “I’ll be seeing you soon.”
Griswold is in the last two years of her second and final term (her position is term-limited). Secretary of state is the first public office she ever sought, and she refused to say whether she’d run for a different position in 2026. Griswold, who was a relatively unknown Democrat in a purple state, was elected when she was just 33. She has been outspoken in her belief that Trump is a danger to democracy, but her job, by design, has a certain neutrality to it. At least, it once did.
Although statewide elected officials have always faced harsh public criticism and intense scrutiny, the vile tenor of the Trump era has changed the reality of the role. Yesterday, Griswold said that the Supreme Court ruling, while technically the “conclusion” of the Trump Colorado-ballot affair, will likely not mark the end of the threats and harassment she’s facing. If anything, the Court’s decision bolstered the notion that Trump is above the law, and may have even emboldened his cultlike supporters to continue to act out. Last night, Trump vanquished his final Republican challenger, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, in all but one of the Super Tuesday states. Haley dropped out of the race this morning, clearing the path for Trump altogether.
Trumpism isn’t going anywhere. And calling Trump a threat to democracy, or expressing her displeasure with the Supreme Court ruling, may well open Griswold up to more vitriol. Like other state-level bureaucrats, she has had to figure out in real time how to respond to the threat of Trump and his extremist followers.
“Those who do not speak up when they’re in positions of power become complicit,” she said. “Those who do speak up do not automatically become partisan. And I think that’s an argument from the far right: that speaking out for democracy is in some way partisan.”
As Super Tuesday kicked off, Griswold met me at a ballot-processing center in Jefferson County, a blue suburban and rural area about half an hour west of Denver. Wearing an Apple Watch and blue blazer, she was trailed by aides and one security official as she walked through the front door. Her focus, at least in that moment, was to show me how safe and secure she believed Colorado’s elections had grown under her watch—even if she, herself, was now more at risk.
Griswold told me that a local news outlet, The Colorado Sun, had recently conducted a poll and that, in the category of “trust,” those who “administer elections and count ballots in Colorado” outperformed every other civic category. She also said that, as of the last processing, an overwhelming majority of voters, no matter their party, had used a mail-in or drop-box ballot. Nevertheless, a common MAGA-world talking point is that anything other than old-school, same-day, in-person voting is tantamount to voter fraud. In Jefferson County, between 95 and 98 percent of all voters, regardless of party affiliation, opt to use ballot drop boxes or to vote by mail in lieu of using traditional voting machines at polling stations.
I rode the elevator with Griswold’s group and the Jefferson County clerk down to the basement of the facility for a look at the various ballot-processing procedures. We wandered long concrete hallways and toured several windowless rooms that required key-card entry: the ballot-casting room, the signature-verification room. In one area, ballots zipped through a massive machine that workers had nicknamed “HAL.” The basement was filled with election judges wearing colored lanyards denoting their political affiliation and mingling pleasantly with one another. Many of these short-term contractors are older, retired people—Griswold shook their hands and thanked them. Wherever we went, individuals stopped to take notice of the roving entourage, though it was unclear how many recognized her.
In Colorado, as in other states, ballot-counting and all related procedures are carried out by a politically diverse pool of workers. But back in 2020, Griswold told me, certain conservative election judges in the state underwent “alternative training” by Republican-aligned groups for their roles and improperly rejected “huge amounts” of legitimate ballots. In another recent scandal, former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was hit with 10 charges on allegations related to a voting-systems breach. Peters maintains that she was looking for evidence of voter fraud or manipulation in the machines, which were built by Dominion Voting Systems, the same company at the center of last year’s historic Fox News settlement. (Some of the threats Griswold receives invoke Peters’s name as if she were a martyr.)
Early this morning, Griswold’s spokesperson told me that yesterday’s Super Tuesday primary went “very smoothly” and that “no major problems were reported.” What chaos might have happened had the Court ruled the other way? Would two sets of ballots have been floating around out there, like alternative Super Bowl–victory T-shirts for both teams? Griswold told me that, in the unlikely event that the Court deemed Trump ineligible, all the votes cast for him would have simply been “rejected.” She compared this outcome to that of other erstwhile Republican candidates, such as Vivek Ramaswamy, who is no longer in the race but whose name is still on the Colorado ballot because her office didn’t receive his paperwork to formally remove it. Of course, had Trump’s more than half-a-million Colorado primary votes been “rejected,” even by law, something akin to another January 6 might have taken place. Griswold acknowledged this.
“We unfortunately contingency-plan for a lot of things,” she said, “including, by the way, in 2020. Everything that Trump was threatening—sending federal law enforcement to polling locations, pulling out the voting equipment, federalizing the National Guard—I took every single thing he said very seriously.”
Griswold grew up in tiny, unincorporated Drake, Colorado, not far from Rocky Mountain National Park. In what sounded a bit like a phrase she’s often repeated, Griswold told me that she lived “in a cabin, with an outhouse outside, on food stamps.” She is the first member of her family to go to a four-year college. She eventually went on to law school at the University of Pennsylvania, and has more than $200,000 left in student debt. Still, as with everything about her personal experience she shared, she was wary of being perceived as weak, or helpless, or unduly complaining.
“I think the amount of threats and harassment coming in, if you were to internalize all of that—would be very hard to do this job,” she said. “I don’t want you to take away from this that I’m super sad and everything’s going bad.” She told me that the harassment campaign had, in a way, been galvanizing. “It’s very motivating to try to stop those guys.”
The threats began to trickle in after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. But they accelerated last September, when Griswold found herself as a co-defendant in the lawsuit alleging that Trump’s seditious actions in the final weeks of his presidency prevented him from holding office ever again.
In the months since then, Griswold has received thousands of gruesome messages and threats—she showed me a white binder of documentation nearly two inches thick. She receives intermittent physical protection from the Colorado state patrol but, much to her consternation, does not have 24/7 government-funded security. (In lieu of a round-the-clock state-patrol detail, Griswold occasionally carries out her job with private security in tow, which she pays for out of her department’s budget.) As with former Vice President Mike Pence, people at rallies have called for her hanging. A man in the Midwest called her office warning, In the name of Jesus Christ, the angel of death is coming to get you. “They didn’t know who he was; they just knew the phone he called from,” she said. “And then that phone started to move. The guy drove into Colorado. So, that was really unnerving.”
Griswold told me she believes that certain people, including Donald Trump and Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, “opened up these floodgates.” But the problem is much more insidious, she said. “It’s every single Republican election-denier in Congress. It’s every single moderate Republican who refuses to stand up to Donald Trump or to call out the conspiracies or political violence.”
Late yesterday afternoon, back in her office, I asked Griswold if she had spoken about her situation with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who in 2020 drew Trump’s wrath and likewise received threats.
Raffensperger, Griswold said, had indeed “opened the door about his experiences” in a private conversation with her that she wouldn’t divulge on the record. “Not many people live under a constant threat environment, including not many secretaries of state,” she said. “It’s not all secretaries of state continually going through this. And so there’s not a lot of people who can relate to what it is to live like this.”
She told me that she believed the threats against her weren’t being taken seriously enough by certain government officials, perhaps because of her gender.
“I’m not telling you I don’t get upset,” she said. “I don’t think I’m avoiding it. I think I’m not allowing it to debilitate me, and that’s a big difference.”
Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which represented the Colorado plaintiffs in the Fourteenth Amendment case, told me that, even in defeat, he believed that this suit had proved Trump engaged in insurrection. The six Coloradans at the center of the matter, Bookbinder added, were not extreme liberals or “Washington people,” and offered that they had “risked a lot putting themselves forward” in challenging Trump. “These were people who were active in Republican communities and really had some resistance from people they know. And they put a lot on the line to do what they thought was the right thing for the country,” he said. Heroes, in other words.
Griswold’s place in this chapter of electoral history might be less clear. I asked her how she squares her anti-Trump posture with the need to remain neutral as an election official. “I think that, No. 1, standing up for democracy is not partisan,” she said. Nor, for that matter, is standing up against those who attack our democracy, she added, “even if they’re a front-runner for the Republican Party, and even if they’re president of the United States.”
Former President Donald Trump surrendered and was booked at the Fulton County jail Thursday after being indicted last week along with 18 others on charges that he attempted to subvert the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Nikole Killion has the latest.
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Lucien Greaves appeared on the right-wing channel after a federal judge ruled the After School Satan Club sponsored by Greaves’ organization could proceed on public school grounds despite a Pennsylvania school district’s objections.
Jones asked Greaves about the clubs and the guest mostly declined to answer, he said, because the matter was still in the courts.
“What do you seek to do in schools all across America?” Jones asked.
“Well, I won’t speak to the issues of what we do in school,” Greaves answered. “If we’re gonna have a discussion about litigation that nobody wants to have, I have 787.5 million questions for you.”
That, of course, was the dollar amount Fox News agreed to pay Dominion for repeatedly and falsely claiming that its machines were rigged against Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Jones, who was filling the fired Tucker Carlson’s time slot while the network decides on a new host, pressed on about the temple’s philosophy, and Greaves said it was advocating freedom from religious superstition. (The Satanic Temple says on its website that it is “non-theistic” and “non-supernaturalist.”)
Asked by Jones whom he would endorse for president, Greaves replied: “Well, as a spokesperson for a religious organization, I certainly would not endorse any politician whatsoever … I think churches should start shutting their mouths when it comes to politics as direct as endorsing particular candidates.”
Greaves jabbed at the right-wing channel and its fallen prime-time star before the interview.
“My one-stop gloating I-Outlasted-Tucker-Carlson victory tour will take place tonight on Fox News during Tucker’s old time slot around 8:20pm live with Lawrence Jones,” he wrote on Twitter.
“This is not a matter of not knowing the truth. They knew the truth,” the CEO of Dominion Voting Systems told 60 Minutes in October. This week, Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion.
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He didn’t have much luck, because the network and its website barely mentioned it.
“What an oversight that is,” he said in mock surprise. “Man oh man, is Rupert Murdoch gonna be mad when he finds out about this.”
Kimmel said one big question remains now that Fox has settled.
“What happens to the MyPillow guy?” he said. “They’re suing Mike Lindell for basically the same thing.”
Lindell has already vowed he won’t settle.
“He’s much too delusional for that,” Kimmel said, then played a clip of Lindell claiming he wouldn’t take $1 billion to settle the suit.
“Hold on now: Why would they offer you a billion dollars?” Kimmel wondered. “Is it possible Mike thinks he’s the one suing Dominion? I’m not sure he understands how being sued works.”
And it only got weirder from there, which you can see in the Wednesday night monologue:
The voting technology company reached a $787.5 million settlement with the right-wing network on Tuesday, the same day the case was supposed to go to trial.
“As somebody who’s also had a very high-profile lawsuit against the former CEO and chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, as somebody who’s been silenced as a result of that ― [not] being able to tell all the facts of what actually happened to me ― you know, I was vicariously living through Dominion and hoping that they would be able to get to the truth,” Carlson told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview Wednesday.
On Sunday night, amid swirling reports that Fox News was making a last-minute push to settle the case out of court, Carlson tweeted: “PLEASE Dominion — Do not settle with Fox! You’re about to prove something very big.”
Gretchen Carlson spoke to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360” about Dominion Voting Systems’ settlement with her former employer.
Carlson left the network in 2016 and subsequently received a reported $20 million settlement related to her allegations of sexual harassment against then-CEO Ailes. She received an apology from the network but was required to sign a nondisclosure agreement that prevents her from discussing many details about her case and what she experienced.
In its statement on Tuesday’s settlement, Fox News vaguely acknowledged that it had broadcast “certain claims” about Dominion that were false, though it did not apologize and went on to hail the settlement as a reflection of its “commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
Carlson said she was unsurprised by the outcome.
Asked why she believed the media company settled, she said: “I think that they saw the writing on the wall.”
“The judge had several rulings during hearings that were not in their favor,” she said. “And it could have also been the makeup of the jury. I mean, remember the jury was seated, and maybe they didn’t like what they saw.”
“And also, I think that they obviously did not want their top hosts to be … media fodder for five or six weeks under oath,” she added.
Dominion had sued for $1.6 billion, accusing Fox News of defaming it by promoting lies that its voting equipment was partly responsible for former President Donald Trump’s loss of the 2020 election, despite knowing those accusations were untrue.
Dominion Voting Systems won big in striking a historic $787 million settlement with Fox News over allegations the broadcaster had defamed the election equipment company. But the biggest financial winner is midsize private equity firm that turned a five-year-old investment in Dominion into a tenfold return.
The firm, Staple Street Capital bought bought a controlling stake in Dominion for about $38 million, according to Reuters, Fortune and other media reports. The settlement with Fox amount comes to more than 20 times Staple Street’s initial investment before legal expenses are deducted. Dominion did not respond to a question on how much of the settlement would go toward legal fees.
The settlement is also multiple times Dominion’s annual revenue, which was estimated at just under $100 million last year, according to data provider Pitchbook. Dominion’s suit against Fox had sought damages of $1.6 billion.
“It’s not every day that an investment fund finds itself at the center of this type of dispute,” Staple Street co-founder Hootan Yaghoobzadeh told reporters on Tuesday shortly after the settlement was announced. He did not mention the financial settlement, saying that Staple Street’s goal in the lawsuit was the pursuit of the truth.
“We are proud to have played whatever part we could in helping Dominion achieve these important goals,” he added.
Even before the settlement, Staple Street had done well with its Dominion investment, according to Reuters. The wire service reported that Dominion was valued at about $226 million in 2020, citing court filings. That’s nearly three times the $80 million valuation Dominion had at the time of Staple Street’s 2018 purchase, Reuters said.
The private equity firm previously owned Six Flags and currently has stakes in a flower bulb distributor, a payroll company and a self-storage service, according to its website. It has $900 million under management, making it a relatively small buyout firm compared with industry giants such as The Blackstone Group and KKR.
A former Staple Street employee foresaw the possibility of windfall emerging from Dominion’s litigation against Fox, according to court filings. In December 2020, the person sent a Staple Street executive a text reading, “Would be pretty unreal if you guys like 20 [times] your Dominion investment with these lawsuits.”
The Fox deal could boost Dominion in other litigation the company is pursuing against parties that allegedly made baseless accusations about its role in the 2020 presidential election. The voting machine company is also suing TV networks Newsmax and OAN for $1.6 billion each, and is asking for $1.2 billion in damages from MyPillow and CEO Mike Lindell in a separate lawsuit.
“Money is accountability, and we got that today from Fox,” Dominion attorney Stephen Shackelford said Tuesday in wake of the settlement. “But we’re not done yet. We’ve got some other people who have some accountability coming towards them.”
Kimmel couldn’t get over a Fox News statement insisting that the settlement “reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
“They’re already lying in their statement about lying,” he said. “It’s shameless!”
Kimmel also called out Dominion for settling, which means Fox can go right back at it.
“The liars who knowingly misled their oatmeal-brained viewers and seriously damaged our democracy don’t have to say anything about it at all ― no apologies, no testimony,” he lamented. “They can go right back to sodomizing the country while Dominion and their lawyers go shopping for yachts.”
Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News have reached a nearly $800 million settlement. The company accused the network of defaming it by pushing false 2020 election claims. A lead attorney for Dominion, Davida Brook, joined with more details about the deal.
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Washington — Lies about the 2020 presidential election spread in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s loss will take center stage in Delaware state court Tuesday, when Dominion Voting Systems will press its claims before a jury that Fox News aired baseless accusations against it that the network knew were false.
The high-stakes trial comes two years after Dominion filed its lawsuit against Fox News and is set to test the bounds of the First Amendment while highlighting unfounded allegations amplified by a former president and his allies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. While the trial was set to kick off Monday with the final round of jury selection and opening statements, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, who is overseeing the case, announced Sunday night that the start would be postponed until Tuesday. He did not cite a reason.
“This is not unusual,” Davis said in brief proceedings Monday morning, noting that postponements often occur.
The key issue for the 12 jurors weighing Dominion’s defamation case against the cable news giant is whether Fox News defamed the company when it broadcast claims that the electronic voting company helped orchestrate a campaign to rig the election against Trump.
For Dominion to succeed, the company’s lawyers must convince the jury that Fox News acted with actual malice, the legal standard that requires a public figure to prove the publisher knew the offending statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. If Dominion succeeds in clearing that high bar, the jury will then decide how much in damages they believe the company is entitled to.
Dominion is suing Fox and its parent company, Fox Corporation, for $1.6 billion and has pointed to 20 statements — many made by conservative lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani — aired on shows hosted by Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity or on Twitter that they argue were defamatory.
“In the coming weeks, we will prove Fox spread lies causing enormous damage to Dominion. We look forward to trial,” a Dominion spokesperson said in a statement before the start of the trial.
Fox News argues that the claims involving Dominion were newsworthy given who made the statements, when they were made and what they concerned, and that the broadcasts are protected by the First Amendment.
“Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall, but the real cost would be cherished First Amendment rights,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement. “While Dominion has pushed irrelevant and misleading information to generate headlines, FOX News remains steadfast in protecting the rights of a free press, given a verdict for Dominion and its private equity owners would have grave consequences for the entire journalism profession.”
The case has already brought into the public view reams of internal text messages and emails exchanged by Fox’s hosts, producers and executives, many of which showed they had doubts about the veracity of the allegations being spread by Trump and his allies.
Both Dominion and Fox News asked Davis to rule in their favor based on the evidence presented in the case. But Davis said in an opinion late last month that a jury will decide whether Fox acted with actual malice in broadcasting the unfounded allegations about Dominion.
The judge also said it is “oxymoronic” to call the challenged 20 statements opinions while also asserting they’re newsworthy allegations. Davis, who reviewed all 20 broadcasts and tweets where the falsehoods about Dominion were made, said it’s “crystal clear” that none of the statements relating to the electronic voting company are true.
Davis last week sanctioned Fox’s attorneys after Dominion alleged the network withheld evidence and information it should have turned over. A Fox attorney apologized to the judge in a letter Friday, writing the network’s legal team is “committed to clear and full communication with the Court moving forward.”
A number of Fox News’ top hosts, including Carlson, Hannity and Baritromo, are expected to testify during the course of the roughly six-week trial, along with co-founder Rupert Murdoch.
Some of Fox News’ most recognizable anchors and Fox Corporation chair Rupert Murdoch could take the stand this week as the network battles a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Votings Systems. Fox News is being sued for $1.6 billion, with Dominion alleging the network spread misinformation about the company and its voting machines. Scott MacFarlane reports.
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Washington — A high-stakes court fight between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News is set to kick off in Delaware superior court on Tuesday, as the voting technology company presses its claim before a jury that Fox knowingly aired false information about its voting machines and software in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
Jury selection started Thursday and was set to resume before opening statements Monday, but the start of the trial was delayed until Tuesday morning, the judge presiding over the case, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, said in a statement Sunday. The trial is predicted to last up to six weeks, during which Dominion has the burden of proving to the jury that Fox acted with actual malice in broadcasting the unfounded allegations about Dominion.
To show actual malice, the legal standard established by the Supreme Court for defamation cases, a public figure — Dominion in this case — must prove the publisher knew the offending statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
If the jury finds Fox News acted with actual malice, it will also determine whether Dominion is entitled to damages and if so, how much should be awarded.
The network’s top stars and top executives from Fox Corporation, Fox News’ parent company, are expected to feature prominently and could testify in-person during the trial.
Here are the key figures to know.
Fox Corporation
FILE — Lachlan Murdoch, left, and Rupert Murdoch attend the TIME 100 Gala, celebrating the 100 most influential people in the world, at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Time Warner Center on Tuesday, April 21, 2015, in New York.
(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, co-chairman and co-chairman and CEO, respectively
Dominion alleges that Fox Corporation’s top officers, including Murdoch, knew that the claims about Dominion were false, and that the evidence demonstrates Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch had editorial responsibility.
In their complaint, the company says that the Murdoch family “plays a central and public role in the managing and oversight of Fox News.”
file: Fox Corporation chief legal and policy officer Viet Dinh.
Fox handout photo
Viet Dinh, chief legal officer and policy officer
Dominion claims that like the Murdochs, Viet Dinh knew the accusations about Dominion were false. He said in deposition testimony that he “sometimes” consults with shows before a particular guest appears because of legal concerns.
File: White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah takes questions from reporters during a press briefing at the White House on Monday, March 26, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Raj Shah, senior vice president
According to messages made public as part of the discovery process, Shah repeatedly indicated he knew the claims about Dominion were outlandish. Shah also led a “brand team” and notified senior leaders from Fox News and Fox Corporation that then-host Neil Cavuto’s pushback to the White House’s voter fraud claims posed a “brand threat.”
FILE: House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, speaks to members of the media following a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018.
.Zach Gibson/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Paul Ryan, former House speaker and Fox Corporation board member
Ryan joined Fox Corporation’s board in 2019 and he sent a message to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch on Dec. 6, 2020, urging “solid pushback” to Trump’s calls for an alternate slate of presidential electors, according to documents made public as part of the case.
“I think we are entering a truly bizarre phase of this where he has actually convinced himself of this farce and will do more bizarre things to delegitimize the election,” Ryan told the Murdochs of Trump. “I see this as a key inflection point for Fox, where the right thing and the smart business thing do line up nicely.”
Fox News Network
File: Fox News CEO, Suzanne Scott, attends the new All-American Christmas Tree lighting outside News Corporation at Fox Square on December 9, 2021 in New York City.
Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images
Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News
Dominion alleged in its lawsuit that Scott and executives were responsible for airing broadcasts that included the 20 statements the company alleges were defamatory. In court filings, Dominion said Scott elevated concerns about the audience’s backlash to its Arizona call for Joe Biden, and told Lachlan Murdoch in a text that the Arizona call “was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”
Jay Wallace, president and executive editor of Fox News Media
Wallace is among the executives who Dominion says was responsible for airing the challenged broadcasts. He spoke with Dominion’s representative on Nov. 17, 2020, and was told of the facts that refuted Fox’s claims, according to the company.
David Clark, senior vice president for weekend news and programming
Messages made public show that Clark received Dominion’s “Setting the Record Straight” emails and told a colleague on Nov. 14 that “I have it tattooed on my body at this point.” He was among the executives who participated in the editorial process and said he oversaw the bulk of programming on the weekends.
Meade Cooper, vice president of prime-time programming
Cooper oversees primetime show content, including Hannity’s, Carlson’s and Pirro’s shows.
Ron Mitchell, senior vice president of prime time programming and analytics
Mitchell advised Carlson’s, Hannity’s and Laura Ingraham’s primetime shows and said during deposition testimony that some of the claims about Dominion “didn’t sound credible to me.”
Lauren Petterson, president of Fox Business
Dominion alleges in court papers that Petterson “had decision-making authority” over what content could appear on Fox Business’s air.
Tom Lowell, executive vice president and managing editor of news
Lowell testified during a deposition that Fox does not “have evidence” to support the baseless allegations about Dominion.
Gary Schreier, senior vice president of programming for Fox Business Network
Schreier was Petterson’s second-in-command and oversaw Dobbs’ show. In a Dec. 13, 2020, email, he warned Dobbs’ producer not to book Sidney Powell and on Jan. 19, 2021, said “We cannot go near dominion. Not the same area code.”
Irena Briganti, senior executive vice president for corporate communications
Briganti wrote the evening that Mr. Biden was declared the winner of the election that “our viewers left this week after AZ,” and according to Dominion’s filings, said that Fox “Gave Powell & Giuliani platform with reach—all true they said crazy things.”
Bill Sammon, former senior vice president and managing editor of Fox’s Washington Bureau
Sammon received pushback from Trump’s team, including then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, after the network called Arizona for Mr. Biden. He exchanged text messages with Chris Stirewalt on Dec. 2, 2020, expressing concern about the claims that Fox was broadcasting.
“More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we’re still focused solely on supposed election fraud — a month after the election,” he wrote. “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”
He was let go by Fox News after the election.
Chris Stirewalt, former Fox News political editor, during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, on Monday, June 13, 2022.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Chris Stirewalt, former politics editor
Stirewalt was the politics editor and member of the Decision Desk, led by Arnon Mishkin. Mishkin made Fox News’ Arizona call, which projected Mr. Biden would win the state. In a deposition, Stirewalt said that “no reasonable person” would have thought allegations Dominion rigged the election were true.
In the Dec. 2, 2020, exchange with Sammon, Stirewalt wrote, “What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff.” Like Sammon, he, too, is no longer with the network.
The Hosts
Tucker Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” poses for photos in a Fox News Channel studio on March 2, 2017, in New York.
Richard Drew / AP
Tucker Carlson
Carlson hosts the 8 p.m. show “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” and his Jan. 26, 2021, broadcast is among the 20 that included falsehoods about Dominion said were defamatory. That show featured Mike Lindell as a guest, and he claimed he found “machine fraud.”
File: Sean Hannity, host at Fox News, broadcasts from the Republican National Convention at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Sean Hannity
Hannity is the host of the eponymous “Hannity,” airing at 9 p.m. His Nov. 30, 2020, broadcast contained challenged statements from Sidney Powell, who peddled baseless claims Dominion’s voting machines flipped votes from Trump to Mr. Biden.
Laura Ingraham seen speaking during the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, MD, on February 28, 2019.
Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Laura Ingraham
Host of the 10 p.m. show “The Ingraham Angle,” Ingraham exchanged messages with Carlson and Hannity calling Powell “a bit nuts,” and the three lamented about the backlash Fox News was receiving from viewers after its Arizona call.
File: Judge Jeanine Pirro of FOX News Network makes remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland, February 23, 2017.
MIKE THEILER/AFP/Getty Images
Jeanine Pirro
Pirro hosted the show “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Fox News until January 2022, when she became a permanent co-host for its show “The Five.” But two of Pirro’s broadcasts on her earlier show, on Nov. 14, 2020, and Nov. 21, 2020, contained statements that Dominion alleges were defamatory.
File: Host Maria Bartiromo with Lee Zeldin, former New York gubernatorial candidate as he visits “Mornings With Maria” at Fox Business Network Studios on Feb. 08, 2023, New York.
Roy Rochlin / Getty Images
Maria Bartiromo
Bartiromo’s show “Sunday Morning Futures” airs weekly on Fox News, and Dominion has identified her Nov. 8, 2020, broadcast as containing information about it that the network allegedly knew to be false.
That episode featured Sidney Powell claiming without evidence that Dominion used an algorithm to manipulate vote counts.
Before the interview, Powell sent Bartiromo an email with the subject line “Election Fraud Info,” which Powell received from a Minnesota woman claiming Dominion’s software flipped votes from Trump to Biden. The email also claimed the late Justice Antonin Scalia was killed in a “human hunting expedition,” and she receives messages from “the wind.”
File: Lou Dobbs interviews Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during “Lou Dobbs Tonight” at Fox Business Network Studios on Sept. 23, 2019 in New York City.
John Lamparski/Getty Images
Lou Dobbs
Dobbs, who is no longer with the company, hosted the show “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” airing on Fox Business Network. Dominion points to eight of Dobbs’ broadcasts that it said contained false information about it, as well as four of his tweets.
Will Cain
Cain co-hosts Fox & Friends Weekend, and on its Dec. 12, 2020, show, Giuliani was a guest and made accusations about Dominion’s voting machines. The company said that as of that date, the public record “clearly demonstrates” that those claims were false.
File: Bret Baier of “Special Report with Bret Baier” interrviews Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on Jan. 05, 2023 in Washington, D.C.
Paul Morigi / Getty Images
Bret Baier
Baier is the chief political correspondent for Fox News and encouraged a fact-check of voter fraud allegations posted on social media by Bartiromo to Sammon, writing “We have to prevent this stuff. … We need to fact check.”
He also wrote in a text message on Nov. 5, made public in the case, that “there is NO evidence of fraud. None. Allegations—stories. Twitter. Bulls**t.”
Eric Shawn
Another Fox host, he was the subject of an email about a fact-check he did about voter fraud claims. In the email, Scott told Cooper, “This has to stop now. … This is bad business and there is clearly a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
The Producers
Alex Hooper, senior producer, Lou Dobbs Tonight
Jerry Andrews, executive producer, Justice with Jeanine
Abby Grossberg, former senior booking producer for “Sunday Morning Futures”
The three producers are identified as “responsible employees” who knew the statements airing on their respective broadcasts were “false or recklessly disregarded the truth.”
Grossberg, in particular, has emerged as a figure whose importance in Dominion’s case appears to be growing. She is a former employee of CBS News.
Grossberg filed a separate lawsuit against Fox News, Scott and its lawyers in Delaware state court alleging she was misleadingly coached and manipulated to deliver incomplete answers during a deposition taken as part of Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox.
In court filings Tuesday, she said Fox News had recordings, through an app called Otter, of separate conversations Bartiromo had with Giuliani and Powell that showed they had no evidence to support claims they amplified about Dominion on Fox’s air.
Fox turned over the recordings to Dominion last week, and during a pretrial conference Wednesday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, who is overseeing the trial, sanctioned Fox’s attorneys for withholding evidence.
The Guests
File: Rudolph Giuliani, attorney for President Donald Trump, conducts a news conference at the Republican National Committee on lawsuits regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election on Thursday, November 19, 2020.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Sidney Powell
Rudy Giuliani
Mike Lindell
The three appeared as guests of Carson, Hannity, Pirro, Bartiromo and Dobbs, where they raised the unfounded accusations about Dominion and its role in the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani and Powell were the subject of internal messages from Fox’s primetime hosts, who pushed back among themselves about the validity of the allegations.
The trial of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News has been delayed until Tuesday morning, according to Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis.
“The Court has decided to continue the start of the trial, including jury selection, until Tuesday,” Judge Davis said.
Dominion is suing the network, claiming Fox News knowingly spread disinformation about the company and its voting machines in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. The software company was at the center of conspiracy theories pushed by allies of former President Donald Trump following his election loss.
For their part, Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, contend that the allegations they were covering were newsworthy, and statements made on the network were protected by the First Amendment.
Some of Fox News’s most well-known current and former anchors are expected to testify, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, and Lou Dobbs, alongside the network’s chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch.
The trial will kick off over two years after Dominion filed its lawsuit against Fox News, which has already resulted in the release of text messages and emails exchanged by some of the network’s top stars.
Both sides requested Davis rule in their favor based on the evidence already developed. Late last month, Davis ruled that the evidence demonstrated it is “CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” and the statements from Fox News that are challenged by Dominion constitute defamation “per se.”
But he said a jury will decide whether Fox acted with actual malice in broadcasting the allegations about Dominion and will determine whether the company is entitled to damages, and if awarded, how much.
— Melissa Quinn contributed reporting.
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Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis will hear a second day of oral arguments in Dominion Voting System’s lawsuit against Fox News Wednesday, as both Dominion and Fox seek a summary judgment that would avert a jury trial that is currently scheduled to begin in April. Dominion is suing Fox News and Fox Corporation for $1.6 billion for defamation lawsuit, while Fox is trying to have the lawsuit thrown out.
The Denver-based electronic voting hardware and software company sued both Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for defamation in 2021. Dominion argues that in the wake of the 2020 election, Fox News employees touted false claims that Dominion changed votes and gave guests a platform to make inaccurate and defamatory statements, even though they knew the claims were false, and they did so to avoid alienating their conservative audience.
On Tuesday, Dominion argued that material from its discovery showed that there were “deliberate” decisions by those responsible for the broadcasts — all the way up the chain of command — to let the false claims be out there. It was “to release the Kraken,” Dominion attorney Rodney Smolla said, echoing one-time Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s unfulfilled promise of proof that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump.
Smolla argued after Fox News was the first to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night, there was fear within the Fox that viewers were abandoning the cable network. That call for Mr. Biden was alienating viewers, Smolla said, and Fox’s executives, producers and hosts had to do something to get viewers back; that’s why they promoted the narrative that the election had been stolen — and Dominion was the thief.
The threshold that Dominion must meet in this case is high because it must prove “actual malice,” meaning that Dominion must show that the network knew the claims were false, or acted with reckless disregard for whether they were false or not in perpetuating the claims of fraud. Dominion lawyers noted that 19 of the 20 broadcasts in question occurred after Dominion had sent “Setting the Record Straight” memos to Fox.
Lawyers for Dominion argued that Fox’s statements constituted “actual malice” when they perpetuated the baseless allegations against Dominion. “Why? Because no one wants Trump as an enemy,” Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said.
Dominion’s attorneys pointed to comments from some of Fox’s biggest stars — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro — which they claimed showed that the hosts knew they were perpetuating falsehoods. Some of the details had been fact checked by journalists at Fox, and they were therefore acting with “actual malice,” Dominion attorneys argued. They also alleged that the Murdochs, as well as other Fox Corporation executives, “let the hosts run wild” and discouraged further fact-checking attempts by Fox News journalists, and were therefore also complicit in the defamation.
Attorneys for Fox disputed that Dominion had met the standard to prove “actual malice,” arguing that in every broadcast highlighted as an example of defamation in the complaint, the hosts used language that “a reasonable viewer” would understand as mere allegation, rather than fact.
“We do not think we are scott-free because a guest said something rather than a host,” Erin Murphy, an attorney for Fox News and Fox Corporation argued in court. However, she went on to say that a show’s host could not guarantee to the audience that every word out of a guest’s mouth is true. As an example, she claimed that when Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo interviewed Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, she took her viewers straight to the source – Trump’s own legal team — and asked them about their allegations and the evidence they had to prove the election had been stolen.
As for any additional opining by Fox cable TV personalities, the company’s legal team argued that opinion is not defamatory. In its reply brief filed ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Fox News argued that “so long as the press makes clear that the allegations are just allegations, it is free to offer its opinion that the allegations are ‘credible’ and merit investigation (as some Fox News hosts and other networks did), just as it is free to offer its opinion that the allegations are implausible (as other Fox News hosts and other networks did).”
Fox News is defending its coverage by claiming that the network was merely covering the statements made by the then-president and his legal team, which were newsworthy.
“Dominion instead advances the radical position that it does not matter if the allegations were accurately presented as allegations, or even if they were presented as false allegations,” Fox News lawyers wrote. “According to Dominion, the mere act of repeating them, or allowing the President’s lawyers to articulate them, makes the press as liable as those leveling the allegations.”
Lawyers for Fox stated in their filing that if Dominion’s goal is to prosecute the network for repeating the Trump camp’s claims, then they should be bringing this action against every news agency that reported on the former president’s allegations as well.
Dominion’s attorneys dispute that point: “Media companies may always report the truth, including reporting on false allegations while explaining that the allegations are false, and Dominion did not sue the many media companies that did just that in 2020.”
“Some shows stopped airing the allegations because they knew they would have to ‘tell the truth’ if they did so,” Dominion wrote. As an example, they point to Fox News host Laura Ingraham who stated in her deposition that by Nov. 12, she “made the decision not to air the false allegations of Dominion.” The company points out that she never made a public admission about their falsehood to her audience.
Exhibits in the case show that some of Fox News’ top executives had harbored misgivings about what was being said on the network after the 2020 election, and even after President Biden had been inaugurated. Hosts, including Tucker Carlson and Ingraham, also expressed concerns about guests who made claims about voter fraud, according to court records.
Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed in February that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. Fox claimed Dominion advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure.
At the beginning of Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Davis made clear to the parties that he had not “pre-decided” whether the case will go to trial or not. Fox will continue its oral argument Wednesday morning, and both legal teams will then have the opportunity for rebuttal.
After a hearing Tuesday, if Judge Eric M. Davis dismisses both requests for summary judgment — one by Dominion Voting systems in its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and the other by Fox to throw out the suit — the case will head to trial in April.
The Denver-based electronic voting hardware and software company sued both Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for defamation in 2021. Dominion argues that Fox News employees touted false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the wake of the 2020 election, and that they gave guests a platform to make inaccurate and defamatory statements, even though they knew the claims were false, and they did so to avoid alienating their conservative audience.
In its reply brief filed ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Fox News argued that “so long as the press makes clear that the allegations are just allegations, it is free to offer its opinion that the allegations are ‘credible’ and merit investigation (as some Fox News hosts and other networks did), just as it is free to offer its opinion that the allegations are implausible (as other Fox News hosts and other networks did).”
Fox News is defending its coverage by claiming that the network was merely covering the statements made by the then-sitting president and his legal team which in and of itself were newsworthy.
“Dominion instead advances the radical position that it does not matter if the allegations were accurately presented as allegations, or even if they were presented as false allegations,” Fox News lawyers wrote. “According to Dominion, the mere act of repeating them, or allowing the President’s lawyers to articulate them, makes the press as liable as those leveling the allegations.”
Lawyers for Fox go on to argue in their filing that if Dominion’s goal is to prosecute the network for repeating the Trump camp’s claims, then they should be bringing this action against every news agency that reported on the former president’s allegations as well.
Dominion’s attorneys dispute that point: “Media companies may always report the truth, including reporting on false allegations while explaining that the allegations are false, and Dominion did not sue the many media companies that did just that in 2020.”
The threshold that Dominion must meet in this case is high because it must prove that Fox acted with “actual malice,” meaning that Dominion must show that the network knew the claims were false or acted with reckless disregard for whether they were false or not in perpetuating the claims of fraud. Dominion lawyers note that 19 of the 20 broadcasts in question occurred after Dominion had sent “Setting the Record Straight” memos to Fox.
“Some shows stopped airing the allegations because they knew they would have to ‘tell the truth’ if they did so,” Dominion wrote. As an example, they point to Fox News host Laura Ingraham who stated in her deposition that by Nov. 12, she “made the decision not to air the false allegations of Dominion.” The company points out that she never made a public admission about their falsehood to her audience.
Exhibits in the case show that some of Fox News’ top executives had harbored misgivings about what was being said on the network after the 2020 election, and even after President Biden had been inaugurated. Hosts, including Tucker Carlson and Ingraham, also expressed concerns about guests who made claims about voter fraud, according to court records.
On Monday, a Fox News producer who worked for hosts Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson filed a pair of lawsuits against the network Monday, alleging its legal team “coerced” her into giving misleading testimony in the ongoing defamation case and accusing Fox News of fostering a “toxic” work environment.
Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed in February that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. Fox claimed Dominion advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure.
Newly-released court documents, as part of a $1.6 billion lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, allege that the network’s executives were aware that their hosts were pushing false election fraud claims about the 2020 general election. Scott MacFarlane reports.
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