WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – Fox News hosts have serious concerns about allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election by a guest who is an ally of former President Donald Trump, according to court filings in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network.
“Sidney Powell lied,” about having evidence for election fraud, Tucker Carlson told a producer about the attorney on Nov. 16, 2020, according to excerpts from the exhibit that remain sealed.
Those internal communications were included in a brief brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems.
Carlson also called Powell in one text a “useless missile,” and “dangerous as hell.” Meanwhile a friend, Laura Ingraham, told Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. Nobody will work with him. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.
Sean Hannity, meanwhile, said in his deposition “the whole narrative that Sidney is pushing, I don’t believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing.
Denver-based Dominion, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, is suing Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation. Dominion said that some Fox News employees intentionally exaggerated false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.
Lawyers for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed Monday that the lawsuit is an attack on the First Amendment. He said Dominion had advanced a “novel defamation theory” and sought “stunning” damages figures aimed at generating headlines, protected speech and boosted Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners.
“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting one of the biggest stories of the day – allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim said. “The truth of the allegations is newsworthy.”
Fox’s attorneys also said in their own brief that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims on the broadcast. “As we continued to press, he became angry and told us not to contact him,” Carlson told the audience on November 19, 2020.
Fox’s lawyers said Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 about whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. He also pointed to an email from October 30, 2020, a few days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just full of bugs.”
In the counterclaim, Fox’s lawyers wrote that while the polling technology company denied the allegations made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion comments about Trump’s allegations.
Fox’s objection is based on New York’s “anti-SLAAP” law. The law is intended to protect those trying to exercise their First Amendment rights from fear of a “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” or SLAPP.
“According to Dominion, FNN has a duty not to report the President’s allegations truthfully, but to prevent or impeach him falsely,” Fox’s lawyers wrote. “Dominion is fundamentally wrong. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be an illusion if the parties to a public controversy could sue the press for providing a forum for the losing party.
Fox’s lawyers warned that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion lawsuit would cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report. He also said documents produced in the lawsuit show that Dominion did not suffer economic harm and did not show that it lost customers as a result of Fox’s election coverage.
Superior Court Judge Eric Davis is scheduled to preside over a trial that begins in mid-April, but granting a summary judgment to either side would eliminate the need for a jury trial that could last up to five weeks.
In a 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should have ruled because “there was not a reasonable jury able to sustain Fox on every element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion’s lawyers also argued that no reasonable jury could have found Fox’s “neutral reporting” and “fair reporting” defenses.
“Recounts and audits conducted by the right election officials in the US repeatedly confirmed the results of the election, including specifically that the Dominion machine accurately counted the votes,” Dominion submitted to the state. “The evidence is more than sufficient for summary judgment on the falsity of Dominion’s claims of election fraud and vote count manipulation software.”
Fox News lawyers denied the network’s coverage and comments were defamatory.
“Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Dominion can point to any defamatory statement, this court must grant Fox News summary judgment on independent grounds that Dominion has no clear and convincing evidence that any relevant individual at Fox News made or published the statement. anything with malicious intent,” the lawyer wrote.
Davis ruled last month that, for purposes of the defamation suit, he would treat Dominion as a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with malice or reckless disregard for the truth.
Attorneys for Fox Corp. joined in the brief filed by Fox News, while also asserting that the parent company is entitled to an independent summary judgment because Dominion has not produced the necessary evidence for its liability.