‘It’s Incredible!’ George Conway Says Fox News In Deep Trouble, Mocks ‘Crazy’ Legal Position To CNN

George Conway mocked Fox News over their “crazy” position in the bombshell Dominion defamation suit, and said of the network’s legal jeopardy “It’s incredible!”

Damning comments made by Fox News hosts and executives in private in the aftermath of the election were revealed in a recent filing by Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News for defamation and seeking $1.6 billion in damages. On Monday afternoon, a new bombshell filing dropped that’s chock full of fresh revelations that include one particularly curious rationale.

On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, anchor Anderson Cooper asked Conway how much trouble Conway thinks Fox is in, and Conway went off:

COOPER: From a legal perspective, how much trouble do you think Fox News is in with this Dominion lawsuit?

CONWAY: Oh, it’s incredible! I litigated libel cases. One in particular, in my practice 25 years ago and litigated lots of other cases.

When you have a libel case, and you’re the plaintiff’s lawyer, you don’t expect to get anything remotely like this. I mean, it’s sort of like — these cases are like a kaleidoscope. What you have is, sometimes you turn that one way and the reporters look a little careless, and they look like they’re ignoring something; and in the other way, they can see how they might have believed the story to be true.

And what’s really remarkable is that this comes in the context of the most difficult standard, the most difficult standard that you could possibly apply in a libel case, which is The New York Times vs. Sullivan standard, which governs the libel claims on matters of public concern against public figures and that requires — it is a bit of a misnomer because people talk about it being the standard of actual malice. The Supreme Court uses that word, but malice really isn’t required.

And then you also hear the term reckless disregard, but recklessness isn’t enough. It’s not enough that a reporter kind of just blew past some facts. It’s — what you have to show and this is a case in 1968, called St. Amant vs. Thompson, that says that what you have to show to show reckless disregard is that, at a minimum, the publisher of the information or the broadcaster of the information, actually entertained serious doubts as to the truth of what was being reported.

And here, it’s just — you have that in droves at multiple levels. You have the factcheckers, you have the anchors. You have Rupert Murdoch all agreeing that this was false. And you’d never see in a libel case, you just virtually never seen a libel case, the libel plaintiff moving for summary judgment, which is a judgment without a trial, saying that there’s really no issue to go to the jury. It’s all one sided.

Because the standard against libel plaintiffs is so high, and here they’ve made that motion, and it’s not a bad motion. I think ultimately, it’ll be heard before a jury. But if the Judge actually granted, certainly on falsity, because they’re not disputing falsity, if the Judge even granted on actual malice, and, you know, and the state of mind, “The New York Times” standard, that wouldn’t be crazy . I think it is remarkable.

COOPER: Do you think it affects — I mean, if the ruling — if it

does go to trial and there is, you know, a big fine for FOX, I mean, does that impact do you think kind of right-wing media, how it behaves going into the 2024 election, or even just the handling of the former President?

Because I mean, FOX is in this weird position now of how if the former President goes on their air and repeats lies about Dominion Voting Machines in the last election, what did they do?

CONWAY: Well, it is hard to say, because the law isn’t going to be any different after a judgment is entered against FOX than it was before.

You’re not supposed to lie. You can’t tell lies. You’re going to be held liable for lies. And yet FOX has been taking this crazy view and you saw it in the excerpts of Rupert Murdoch’s deposition, you see it in some of the statements that their PR flacks had been releasing, which is like, oh, well, FOX didn’t endorse the Big Lie, maybe even some of our anchors did. It doesn’t work that way.

You know that, Anderson, if you say something and you report something, and you describe it as fact or even as something short of established fact. I mean, you know, CNN is on the hook if you libel somebody, and your state of mind matters.

And it’s just, it’s like —

COOPER: Yes.

CONWAY: It is crazy what they’re taking — they are taking a position like, these people, yes, we pay them. We pay them millions of dollars. They sit on — they are on our air, they work for us, but they don’t speak for us.

A Fox News spokesperson furnished the following statement in response to the new filing:

Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims. Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

Watch above via CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.