Former US President Donald Trump, who announced his third presidential bid in 2024, hosts a New Year’s Eve party at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, USA December 31, 2022.
Marco Bello Reuters
In the hours after violent mobs stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, executives at Fox Corp. vetoed former President Donald Trump’s attempt to appear on the network’s air, according to court documents filed Thursday.
The document states that the former president entered Lou Dobbs’ private show on the evening of January 6, but executives shut down Trump’s attempts to appear on air.
“Fox refused to allow President Trump on the air that evening because it was ‘irresponsible to put him on the air’ and ‘it could affect a lot of people in a negative way,'” the filing said.
The documents were released publicly for the first time this week as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox Corp. and its cable TV networks. Dominion brought a defamation lawsuit against Fox and its right-wing cable networks, Fox News and Fox Business, alleging the network and its anchors made false claims that the company’s voting machines falsified the results of the 2020 election. The lawsuit is pending in the Delaware Supreme Court.
Dominion, Fox Corp. and Fox News filed a motion for summary judgment this week, revealing evidence from months of discovery and depositions that have been private up to this point. Fox News anchors, as well as top Fox Corp brass including Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch, were questioned in recent months.
The evidence also shows that top Fox News anchors, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, do not believe the fraudulent claims made against Dominion that rigged the election. The anchor was particularly skeptical of fraud claims by pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Ingraham said in a message to Carlson: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with him. Ditto with Rudy,” According to the document.
Fox and the network have vehemently denied the claims. In court papers Thursday, Fox Corp. said it had “no role in the creation and publication of the challenged statements — all of which were aired on the Fox Business Network or the Fox News Channel.”
Meanwhile, Fox News reiterated in court papers that it “remains committed to providing full information and commenting fairly” on claims that Dominion rigged the election against Trump.
“There is a lot of noise and confusion caused by Dominion and opportunistic private equity owners, but the heart of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights granted by the Constitution and protected by New York. Times v. Sullivan,” Fox said in a statement issued on Friday.
Dominion said in a court filing that Fox and its hosts felt pressure from viewers to back down on election night 2020 when it called the state of Arizona for Biden. The pressure was evident in the text messages between Fox’s main personalities in the weeks after the election, which continued until January 6.
On the night before Jan. 6, Rupert Murdoch told Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, “You’ve suggested that the three of us should be independent or together say something like ‘The election is over and Joe Biden won,'” according to court papers. Saying so “will go a long way to ending the Trump myth that the election was stolen,” he said.
On the evening of January 6, Carlson sent a text to the producer, calling Trump “a demonic force. A destroyer. But he will not destroy us,” court papers show.
These lawsuits have been followed closely by First Amendment watchdogs and experts who are given libel lawsuits often centered on a single falsehood but in this case, Dominion cited a list of examples of Fox TV hosts who made false claims even when they were proven to be false. Media companies are often widely protected by the First Amendment.
The trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.