Even right-wing Fox media mogul Rupert Murdoch found Rudy Giuliani’s wild vote-rigging press conference after Donald Trump’s election loss “insane,” according to a court filing.
“Really crazy stuff, and devastating,” Murdoch wrote in a November 2020 text message revealed in a bombshell summary brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems. The company is suing Fox News and its parent Fox News Corporation for $1.6 billion for defamation.
In an unforgettable presentation, Giuliani and pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell created a strange and inexplicable story about a hijacked election that involved the manipulation of voting machine software “made in Venezuela” at the direction of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died seven last year. .
A wild-eyed Giuliani looked like he had dyed his hair during the press conference (see video below).
Fox News host Tucker Carlson told a producer that “Sidney Powell lied” about having evidence to support his story, according to court filings. Carlson also reportedly called Powell in a text a “useless missile,” and “dangerous as hell.”
Fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut; nobody would work with him,” adding: “Ditto with Rudy,” according to the filing.
Despite the off-the-rails press conference and outright disbelief of the claims, Fox News hosts, executives and Murdoch continued to use Fox’s powerful media platform to prop up the baseless story of election fraud, Dominion aptly denied.
“Fox knows,” says the latest court. “From the top down, Fox knows the ‘Dominion stuff’ is ‘total bs.'”
Fox defended the coverage, and responded with a statement with the latest revelation that the Constitution protects the “fundamental rights” of “freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”
But courts have ruled in the past that intentional lying is not protected speech. Fox reporters and executives knew the rigged election story was a lie, but continued to push it, which amounts to defamation, Dominion said in its brief.