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CNN anchor Pamela Brown asked Dominion Voting Systems Lead Counsel Justin Nelson the question many people are wondering about: why weren’t on-air apologies part of the Fox News settlement?

In a stunning turn of events Tuesday afternoon, Fox News agreed to a settlement that included a $787.5 million payout in the defamation suit that was just about to play out in a weeks-long trial, after volumes of damaging revelations were publicized pretrial. The settlement also included a tepid and conspicuously non-apologetic “acknowledgment” of “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN Primetime, Brown and her panel interviewed Nelson, and Brown wasted little time in asking why apologies and corrections weren’t part of the settlement, and pressed the point for several minutes:

BROWN: But Dominion initially wanted Fox to make on-air apologies. Why wasn’t that part of this settlement?NELSON: Well, I really think, again, going back to what our goals were. Our goals were accountability, number one, and trying to have some semblance of a whole for Dominion as a company, to have some remuneration for the reputational hit that it has suffered and continues to suffer as a result of these lies. And those have been our goals all along. And today’s settlement achieved that.And we could have gone all the way through trial and obtained some unknown judgment. But

what we achieved today was certainty. What we achieved today was again nearly $800 billion — excuse me — $800 million in the settlement number. And we achieved the admission of — from Fox that it was the acknowledgement that the court, in fact, was correct in calling these lies.So, for us, it was about the fact that ultimately — go ahead. Say (ph) please.BROWN: Yeah, yeah. I mean, let’s talk about this because it was not necessarily a full-throated admission here when you look at the statement that — the statement is acknowledging the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.You’re a lawyer. You know those words are very carefully chosen, and the reality is millions of people in the United States won’t necessarily know about this. I mean, do the viewers of Fox — are they owed an apology or retraction here? I mean, if they don’t know about this, where is the accountability that you speak of?NELSON: Well, it’s a really good question, and I think part of what really is going on here is that we are sometimes we’re in these bubbles. And what happened to Dominion was that it just got caught in this torrent of lies and got brought into this alternative universe where conspiracy theories dominated.This is a civil litigation case and what we think happened here was we took the civil
litigation as far as we can take it. We could have gone all the way to verdict and under defamation law, you don’t get an apology. You get money.And so, what we achieved here with the statement that Fox made, with the certainty of money and again from our damages, we had a base case damages model, and then we had a growth damages model, and the settlement today was above our base case damages model. So, we see today’s settlement as complete vindication and really a message that, as your opening said, lies do have consequences.And it’s about having come back to the shared facts because, ultimately, we can agree or disagree on issues even to the most profound importance. We have to have shared facts in this society to have a functioning democracy. And I think today’s settlement was a real step in that direction.BROWN: And so, what I hear from you is that there is this acknowledgement in the statement, plus the money from the settlement. There was no apology in this statement.From our — from what I am gathering from you and I’m going to open this up for my colleagues to ask questions, but just one final point on that, how much of a sticking point to reach the settlement was an apology or a retraction? How much of a role did that play in the settlement negotiations? Because I know that
was something Dominion was asking for early on.NELSON: Well, I don’t really want to get into that. I think at the end of the day, this goes back to what are goals really were at this entire settlement and this entire litigation, which was number one, accountability, and number two, to have some type of monetary settlement.

Watch above via CNN Primetime.

Tags: CNN Primetime, Dominion Voting Systems, Justin Nelson, Pamela Brown