(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A new filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News claims that the network’s star hosts privately doubted claims that the 2020 election was stolen, even while promoting those claims on their shows.
Dominion’s 192-page filing Thursday in the Superior Court of Delaware quotes liberally from internal Fox communications apparently obtained in discovery, including purported messages between Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.
The Dominion filing quotes excerpts, but not the entire contents of the message complaints. The full messages are attached as exhibits to the court filing, but are not publicly available online.
Nevertheless, the excerpts do look damning.
In one exchange, Carlson purportedly told his producer, “Sidney Powell is lying. Fucking bitch”—referring to Powell’s role in pushing the Dominion voter fraud allegations.
Carlson also allegedly told Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020, that “Sydney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane”—to which Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].”
Carlson then responded again, telling Ingraham that “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”
The filing lists numerous other messages from Fox news officials doubting the Dominion voter fraud story. Dominion argued that Fox continued to pursue the story, despite the private doubts, because it was worried about losing ratings to Newsmax, which was lending the story credence.
Fox News reportedly responded to Dominion’s filing on the same day, saying that it was covering the story because it was being promoted by the sitting U.S. President at the time.
“In its coverage, Fox News fulfilled its commitment to inform fully and comment fairly,” Fox’s brief reportedly said. “Some hosts viewed the president’s claims skeptically; others viewed them hopefully; all recognized them as profoundly newsworthy.”
A Fox News spokeswoman also released a statement on the matter.
“Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law,” the spokeswoman reportedly said.
Conservative commentators also jumped in on the issue, pointing out that Carlson, far from promoting the Dominion story, criticized it for a lack of evidence.
Tucker Carlson shut down the Sidney Powell stuff in November 2020. Fake news is acting like he didn’t! All they had to do was … basic homework. Here, I’ll do it for them.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 17, 2023
While Dominion—and apparently Fox News—are treating the 2020 voter fraud claims as an open-and-shut case, litigation over the issue continues in other jurisdictions.
For instance, the Fulton County Board of Elections in Pennsylvania sued Dominion Voting Systems several months ago for “breach of contract” after finding “severe anomalies” in its voting machines during the 2020 general election.
Two Fulton County commissioners also joined in the lawsuit, which seeks to have Dominion pay “all fees, expenditures and costs” resulting from its faulty election equipment.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
