Ex-Fox News Producer Files New Claim She Was Coached in Dominion Suit Three Days After Firing From Network
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg submitted a new court filing Monday alleging the network’s lawyers pressed her into giving misleading testimony about their coverage of Dominion Voting Systems, the company currently suing Fox News for $1.6 billion for defamation.
Grossberg, a former booker and producer for Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo, was fired from Fox last week after filing two lawsuits against her former employer. The lawsuits detailed claims of sexual harassment, antisemitic comments, and misogyny from her colleagues at the network. Grossberg also claimed Fox was setting her and Bartiromo up to take the blame for the network’s amplification of 2020 election conspiracy theories.
As Fox News has faced a series of bombshell legal filings from Dominion in recent weeks, Grossberg filed paperwork in Delaware and New York seeking to amend her previous testimony with regards to Dominion. Grossberg alleged that Fox’s lawyers took a heavy hand in her deposition prep, instructing her to speak in abstract terms and give other misleading statements that would make her look bad and draw liability away from the network.
“Based on what I understood and took away from the deposition preparation sessions I had with Fox’s legal team which were coercive and intimidating,” Grossberg said, “I felt that I had to do everything possible to avoid becoming the ‘star witness’ for Dominion or else I would be seriously jeopardizing my career at Fox News and would be subjected to worse terms and conditions of employment than male employees as I understood it.”
From NBC News’s report on the Grossberg filings:
The amended New York complaint also says Fox attorneys would repeatedly say to Grossberg, “‘who really can/does recall anything?'” thereby “fraudulently inducing her to deny facts she knew to exist.” She says the attorneys also intimated that she should not reveal how she was unable to read and react to all the email warnings Dominion had sent to Fox News because of inadequate staffing and lack of resources. She says she was instead supposed to indicate that “nothing fell through the cracks” at Fox News…
In the amended New York complaint, Grossberg says that during deposition prep sessions Fox lawyers showed her two text message exchanges from Nov. 8 and Nov. 9, 2020, about “a particularly troubling [on-air] segment in which Rudy Giuliani made unfounded allegations about widespread election fraud.” She says that the messages showed it had been “pre-taped” and thus could have been edited or prevented from airing but that David Clark, then the network’s senior vice president of weekend news, had chosen not to keep it off the air.
To cover up the omission, Grossberg says, the Fox attorneys coached her to say the segment was “live to tape” to imply it could not have been edited between taping and airing. “The Fox News Attorneys knew full well, however,” says the complaint, that what they were “trying to bully Ms. Grossberg to weave into her testimony was materially misleading.”
While Fox claims Grossberg’s firing was about her unauthorized disclosure of privileged information, Grossberg’s attorneys maintain that her termination was “thinly veiled retaliation” for her lawsuits.
“We will pursue Fox News and protect Ms. Grossberg in any and every court necessary until her truth prevails and justice is done,” they said.
A Fox News spokesperson offered this response to Grossberg’s allegations:
Like most organizations, FOX News Media’s attorneys engage in privileged communications with our employees as necessary to provide legal advice. Last week, our attorneys advised Ms. Grossberg that, while she was free to file whatever legal claims she wished, she was in possession of our privileged information and was not authorized to disclose it publicly. We were clear that if she violated our instructions, Fox would take appropriate action including termination. Ms. Grossberg ignored these communications and chose to file her complaint without taking any steps to protect those portions containing Fox’s privileged information. We will continue to vigorously defend Fox against Ms. Grossberg’s unmeritorious legal claims, which are riddled with false allegations against Fox and our employees.
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