‘Any and All’ Biden Policies Should Be Labeled ‘Socialism’: 4 New Revelations From Fox News-Dominion Lawsuit
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
More Dominion Voting Systems slides used during a recent court hearing in the voting company’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News were made public on Friday.
The Dominion lawsuit has pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of Fox News, particularly focused on the 2020 presidential election and internal discussions among hosts and executives denouncing former President Donald Trump’s election fraud allegations, which were given a platform on-air.
“Executives at all levels of Fox — both (Fox News Network) and (Fox Corporation) — knowingly opened Fox’s airwaves to false conspiracy theories about Dominion,” Dominion wrote in a recently unsealed filing. A five-week trial is currently scheduled to begin on April 17.
Fox News continues to fight the lawsuit in court and has claimed, “These documents once again demonstrate Dominion’s continued reliance on cherry-picked quotes without context to generate headlines in order to distract from the facts of this case. The foundational right to a free press is at stake and we will continue to fiercely advocate for the First Amendment in protecting the role of news organizations to cover the news.”
Below are four of the most newsworthy revelations in the latest round of new or redacted information released in the lawsuit.
‘Any and all’ Biden policy announcements to be labeled ‘socialism’
In an October 2020 email, Fox Corporation Senior Vice President Raj Shah wrote an email with the subject line, “Lengthy Memo re Tucker Carlson Tonight,” in which he suggested “any and all” Biden policy announcements be immediately labeled “socialism.”
“The right will be keen to frame a Biden presidency as a vessel for a radical left committed to enacting socialism. Framing any and all policy announcements as “socialism” and taken from an AOC-Bernie Sanders playbook will likely animate Tucker’s core audience,” Shah wrote.
While many pundits and observers have long criticized knee-jerk partisan attacks on the other side as lacking in substance, it is rare to see a news organization put in writing a suggestion to ignore the details of a presidential candidate’s platform and simple dismiss them under a political label.
Lou Dobbs admitted inaccurate statements on-air regarding ‘groundbreaking new evidence’ of election fraud
Lou Dobbs, who hosted Lou Dobbs Tonight before he was fired by Fox in 2021, sat for a deposition and admitted to making false statements on air:
Q. … you broadcast on your show on November 30th the claim that, quote, We need, frankly, to stop the election that’s supposed to happen in January because all the machines are infected with the software code that allows Dominion to shave votes for one candidate and give them to another and other features that do the same thing. Close quote. Did you have — had you seen any evidence from Ms. Powell or anyone else to support that claim?
A. No.
Q. Did you tell your audience that?
A. No.
Dominion’s lawyers then asked a follow-up, explicitly driving the point home:
Q. It was a false statement that Powell had revealed groundbreaking new evidence on your show indicating that the 2020 presidential election came under a massive cyberattack orchestrated with the help of Dominion, wasn’t it?
A. Yes, that’s correct. It’s an overstatement.
Q. You don’t believe that’s a false statement?
A. A false statement, it’s an overstatement, I concur.
Q. You concur with what, that it’s a false statement or —
A. I said yes.
Scott and Murdoch discussed post-election firings: ‘Big message with Trump people’
New emails from Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to Fox Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corporation, revealed the thinking behind the firing of two of Fox News’s key political editorial staff members who helped the network call the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden.
Fox was the first network to call Arizona for Biden, a decision that enraged the network’s audience and sparked an internal crisis that Dominion argues led to Trump’s false claims of a stolen election being promoted on air.
“Sammon was told the inevitable today. We were going to do Stirewalt next…was going to work with Irena on managing the message. We agree “a big shake-up” message is good for us,” Scott wrote, referring to Bill Sammon, a former senior vice president who oversaw the Arizona call, and former Fox politics editor Chris Stirewalt, who defended the call on air.
“Maybe best to let Bill go right away and make acting appointment. Also the other guy. Next few weeks will be very sensitive and we can’t have sneering at events. And be a big message with Trump people,” Rupert Murdoch replied to the November 20th, 2020 email.
Pirro refused to change opening monologue despite fact check
Jerry Andrews, a Fox News vice president overseeing weekends, emailed then Fox News Media Senior Vice President David Clark about Jeanine Pirro’s opening monologue on her show Justice with Judge Jeanine on Friday, November 20th, 2020.
“She’s refusing to drastically change the open despite the fact check. She says just because the case was dismissed does not legally mean that the affidavit can’t be true. I guess that is valid but seems pretty desperate to me,” Andrews wrote ahead of the Saturday program.
Clark replied, “Understood.”
Fox News argued in court that Pirro’s November 21, 2020 show, referred to in the Clark-Adams email exchange highlighted by Dominion, only included Pirro recounting “what ‘the president’s lawyers’ were ‘alleging.'”
The Fox slide adds, “Pirro then merely posed a question many had been asking,” when she asked her audience, “Now, why was there an overnight popping of the vote tabulation that cannot be explained for Biden?”
Read more coverage of the Dominion suit here.
