New York (CNN) Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox Corporation, agreed Deposition Some Fox News hosts were picked up by Dominion Voting Organizations for endorsing false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Murdoch’s comments were made public in a legal filing as part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News.
In his deposition, Murdoch denied that the right-wing talk network endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election lies as an organization. But Murdoch admitted that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo and former host Lou Dobbs promoted the lie that the presidential race was rigged.
“Some of our commentators were approving of it,” Murdoch said, according to the filing, when asked about talk show hosts’ on-air stances on the election. “I wish we had been stronger in condemning it, in retrospect,” he added.
The filing also described some of Trump’s 2020 election lies that Murdoch called “bulls**t and damaging.”
Fox calls Dominion’s case ‘suspicious’
In a Monday report, Fox News hit out at Dominion.
“Dominion’s case always made more headlines than it could withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” the network said, adding, “Now they’re forced to drop their demand for hypothetical damages by more than half a billion dollars. The expert dismissed its incredible claims.”
“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupportive view of defamation law, which bars journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly defame Fox for commenting on and covering up allegations of a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a flagrant violation of the First Amendment,” the network added.
Fox on Monday defended the actions of executives and hosts during the 2020 election in its own legal filings contesting Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit. Fox alleged that its hosts’ on-air assertions about election fraud were taken out of context.
Fox says it shouldn’t be responsible for the hosts’ claims.
“Dominion’s summary judgment motion is flawed from top to bottom and must be denied in its entirety,” Fox News’ attorneys filed Monday.
In its filing, Dominion offered no factual support for the dubious theory that Fox Corporation’s top executives chose to ‘publish and broadcast’ or played a direct role in creating and publishing false election lies. “
Fox mocks election fraud claims
in another Filed earlier this monthA collection of messages and emails from some of the most prominent stars and high-ranking executives at Fox News showed they had. Personal mocking claims of electoral fraud In the 2020 election, despite the right-wing channel propagating lies about the presidential race in its broadcasts.
News shows Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham viciously mocked the lies peddled by former President Donald Trump’s camp claiming the election was rigged.
The court filing offered the clearest picture to date of the behind-the-scenes chaos at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rallied against the right-wing channel for accurately calling the race in favor of Biden.
Top legal experts told CNN after last week’s filing that Dominion’s legal position was strong.
“This is a huge blow,” noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams said of Dominion’s motion for summary judgment, adding that “the recent revelations certainly put Fox in a very dangerous situation.”
Rebecca Tushnett, the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School, described Dominion’s evidence as a “very strong” record that “clearly shows the difference between what Fox said publicly and what key people at Fox admit privately.”
Tushnet said that in her years of legal practice and teaching, she had never seen such poor evidence gathered in the pre-trial phase of a defamation case.
“I don’t remember anything that compares to this,” Tushnett said. “Donald Trump seems very good at creating unprecedented situations.”
Murdoch gave Kushner ‘confidential information’ about Biden ads
In Dominion’s filing, Murdoch told Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, “confidential information about [President Joe] Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy” in 2020, “give Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they become public,” the court filing says.
Murdoch, under oath, said on election night that Kushner was upset about the media’s coverage of the election, which eventually called Biden. Murdoch testified that Kushner said, “It was horrible,” and that Murdoch “could hear Trump yelling in the background.” Murdoch replied, “Well, numbers are numbers.”
According to the filing, Murdoch said he believes there was no fraud in the election.
“Yeah. I mean, we thought, we thought everything was on the upswing. I think it showed when we announced Arizona,” Murdoch said, referring to Fox News’ prediction that Joe Biden would win the key battleground state on election night. .
A Kushner spokesman did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
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