Legal Expert on CNN Downplays Significance of Murdoch Testimony in Fox Defamation Case: ‘It’s Not a Smoking Gun’
First Amendment lawyer Lee Levine downplayed the legal significance of the latest documents released out of Dominion Voting System’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
During a Monday appearance on CNN, Levine told Anderson Cooper that the new filing is certainly “helpful” to Dominion, but it’s not a “smoking gun.” The filing revealed Fox executives and hosts were regularly questioning the 2020 presidential election fraud conspiracy theories being peddled by guests after Donald Trump’s defeat.
Fox News has meanwhile claimed Dominion is “cherry picking” and mischaracterizing statements.
Cooper noted that Levine called the defamation lawsuit the strongest he’d seen in his 40 years in law during an appearance on 60 Minutes in October of 2022.
The CNN host asked Levine to characterize the case now in the wake of the new filing.
“They haven’t made Dominion’s case weaker. I can say that,” Levine said.
Pushing further, Cooper asked what was so “damning” about these new revelations, but Levine didn’t see the “damning” part in a legal sense.
Levine said:
I think you have to separate out the news value of today’s filing from the legal significance of today’s filing. As a news matter … this is important stuff. From a legal perspective, it is certainly helpful to Dominion’s case, but it’s not a smoking gun. I have not seen, in the deposition excerpts at least, evidence that Murdoch believed that the specific statements in the specific broadcasts that are being sued about were endorsed by the hosts. He’s speaking more generally about whether the hosts were endorsing the idea of a stolen or a fraudulent election, and that’s certainly helpful to Dominion, but it doesn’t get them all the way to the finish line.
Just because Levine isn’t declaring Fox News dead and buried over the news doesn’t mean there’s no significance to Dominion’s case. According to Levine, many of the statements Dominion has taken issue with likely warrant a trial.
“I would be extremely surprised if a substantial number of the statements that Dominion has sued about don’t make it through to a trial,” he said.
Watch above via CNN.
