While a Fox News guest and anchor presents former President Trump’s false accusations that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election, Rupert Murdoch The head of the network didn’t believe a single word of this.
The testimony released Tuesday showed Murdoch. The Fox Corp chairman dismissed any theories pushed by Trump’s legal representatives and his conservative news network’s legal representatives.
Fox News is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit. It accused the network of deliberately lying about making fraudulent claims to boost its rankings. Murdoch was impeached in the Jan. 19 lawsuit.
The record shows that when Justin Nelson asked Murdoch, one of Dominion’s lawyers, “the 2020 elections are not free and fair,” the godfather’s answer was “no.”
“Do you believe that Joe Biden was legally elected president of the United States,” Nelson asked.
Murdoch said yes.
“It’s not right that the election was stolen from President Trump, right?”
“It wasn’t stolen,” Murdoch replied.
“Do you believe that President Trump is a painful loser?”
“Yes,” Murdoch replied.
Murdoch gave the same negative response when asked about the allegations. Happened to Dominion by a guest and news anchor who appeared on Fox News.
Dominion was falsely accused by Trump’s team of using machines to manipulate voting to throw elections to Joe Biden. Trump’s representative also said without evidence that the Denver-based voting machine maker was controlled by the Venezuelan government.
Fox News maintains that reporting and commentary are protected by the 1st Amendment because allegations put forward by the sitting president are newsworthy. Even if it’s false
Dominion must prove to a Delaware court that Fox News acted maliciously by recklessly ignoring the truth in reporting Trump’s claims and false accusations against Dominion.
Dominion’s Petition for Summary Judgment Citing depositions and internal communications at Fox News, it said executives, producers and news anchors expressed concern about what would happen to pro-Trump guest and commentators such as Maria Bartiromo, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, and former Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs talk about false claims.
in dismissal Murdoch admits that Dobbs Bartiromo and other hosts It was the cause of allegations that were not supported by Dominion.
Many have described the statements by Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani as “crazy” and “crazy.”
But they continued to appear on networks promoting falsehoods in the weeks leading up to the January 6 capitol riots, when Trump supporters tried to stop the vote counting.
in his testimony Murdoch admitted he had the power to prevent Giuliani and Powell from appearing on Fox News, but he chose not to. Murdoch said he was intent on going against a pro-Trump Fox News audience who was angry with the results of the election. Fox News was the first network on election night to call Joe Biden in Arizona.
Trump “has a lot of followers. And they’re likely to be the majority of Fox viewers. So it would be silly,” Murdoch said in his testimony.
A jury trial is scheduled for April 17.
