CNN New Day Relishes Judge Denying Fox News Dismissal in Dominion Lawsuit: Hosts Might Be Deposed Under Oath
CNN’s New Day relished a judge denying Fox News’ request to dismiss the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.
New Day co-host John Berman called the development “a major legal blow to Fox News.”
“A Delaware judge refused to dismiss a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems who say Fox may have slanted its coverage to push false claims of election fraud,” continued Berman. “This also sets up the potential for top Fox personalities to have to testify under oath in the case.”
CNN media critic and Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter said:
Now that you see that they are moving forward, Dominion has won this key victory. Either this is a situation where Fox will settle and pay many, many, many, many millions of dollars and make this go away or they will, you know, go forward and actually let depositions happen and have executives be deposed and hosts be deposed and emails turned over.
And there can be some very embarrassing information in these emails and in these correspondence, you know, from November, December of last year. Fox was touting the Big Lie, fueling the fire that led to the [Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol] riot. We know that and this lawsuit may expose even more of that but, again, that’s only if Fox decides not to settle at this point or if Dominion is not willing to settle. That’s the other factor here. Dominion may not want to settle. Dominion Voting Systems wants to regain its reputation. It may not be willing to settle. It may fight this all the way to court.
“And they have had a lot of court cases,” said CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who was filling in as co-host on New Day. “This is not just their only one because they’re really frustrated. They say it hurt their company they way that what was said about them.”
“And they also said I thought something was interesting that the judge took into consideration that Dominion went to Fox and said this is why the information that you have is wrong. Here is proof that it’s not true,” she continued. “And they’re saying that is what factored into it. That they did reach out to them and try to say, ‘Hey, here’s why this is wrong.’”
Laura Jarrett, anchor of CNN’s Early Start, echoed Collins and said that Dominion went to the highest levels of Fox executives to say here’s a fact sheet of all the things you got wrong.”
“Here’s the DOJ, pointing out all the ways you’re wrong and the contrary evidence and yet you still had and put on lie after lie week after week. Which is what goes into what they call actual malice standard, which is what Dominion has to prove here,” she continued. “It’s actually a high bar for them to say you actually knowingly put on lies not just that you sort of washed over it. You knowingly put on lies. You knowingly hoodwinked your viewers with all of this crap. And, I mean, the judge just saw right through it.”
Stelter dunked on Fox News, calling this week their “worst … in years,” citing the departure of Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace, whom Stelter said “had enough,” the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot revealing text messages sent by Fox News hosts to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows“showing their rank hypocrisy on Jan. 6 and now you have this court loss for Fox.”
“It is one damning bit of news after another showing that there is at some point a reality up against the lies,” said Stelter.
Jarrett sounded excited about the possibility of Dominion getting text messages and other evidence from the Fox News side and getting “depositions with the likes of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and they’re going to be able to question them under oath about what they wrote.” Hannity and Ingraham were implicated by the House committee investigating Jan. 6 as having sent text messages to Meadows, calling on the president to take action to put down the riot.
Watch above, via CNN.
