6 Bombshell Revelations From Trove of New Evidence in Fox News Defamation Suit
“The North Koreans do a more nuanced show” than Lou Dobbs, said Fox News president Jay Wallace in the weeks after the 2020 election, according to a trove of private texts, emails, and evidence revealed in a newly unsealed filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation suit against the cable news network.
It is just one of many wild comments made by Fox News hosts and executives in private in the aftermath of the election, when then-President Donald Trump’s false claims the election was stolen from him fueled uncontrolled misinformation on the air at Fox News and a major crisis behind the scenes.
The revelations, and their consequences, are stunning. They support a core tenet of Dominion’s argument against Fox News, namely that the network allowed conspiracy theories about the election to air despite knowing, in the words of Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, that those theories were “crazy.”
They also demonstrate the gulf between what was said on air by Fox’s top hosts and what they privately believed. While they allowed absurd claims about the election to air to millions of viewers unfettered, and some hosts continue to push those claims today, in private they describe them as insane.
Fox News issued a statement responding to the Dominion brief. The company will be able to respond in court later this month.
“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox said. “Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”
Read the top six most stunning revelations from the brief below.
Rupert Murdoch instructed the president of Fox News to help Trump “any way we can”
On November 16, Murdoch emailed Fox News president Suzanne Scott with a warning about Newsmax as the small conservative network gained support from Trump and viewers who defected from Fox News out of outrage over the early call of Arizona for Joe Biden.
“These people should be watched, if skeptically,” Murdoch texted Scott.
The next line is a staggering one coming from a news executive to the head of a supposedly independent cable news network:
Trump will concede eventually and we should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can. We don’t want to antagonize Trump further, but Giuliani taken with a large grain of salt. Everything at stake here.
Trump did not concede that Biden would be sworn in as president until Jan. 7, the day after a mob of his supporters, fueled by the election lie invented by Trump and spread by Fox News, ransacked the Capitol and beat police.
Tucker tried to get star reporter Jacqui Heinrich fired
Tucker Carlson apparently has a group chat with fellow prime time stars Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. On the night of November 12, Carlson texted the group chat about a tweet from Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, in which she fact checked a tweet from Trump about Dominion.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” she correctly noted in the tweet.
The Trump tweet she was fact-checking, however, cited Hannity and Dobbs, a fact that seemed to draw Carlson’s ire.
He texted the group chat: “Please get her fired. Seriously….What the fuck? I’m actually shocked…It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Carlson added he “went crazy on” Fox News executive Meade Cooper about the tweet. Hannity said he reached out to Scott about the post, and it was later deleted and replaced without quoting the Trump reference to Fox.
Reporters were punished for fact-checking
The Tucker attempt would not be the only time Fox News reporters faced repercussions for fact-checking false election claims.
When Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell delivered their deranged press conference — where they advanced election claims even Trump thought were nuts — Murdoch sent an email calling the claims “Really crazy stuff. And damaging.”
Yet the Dominion brief argues a fear of upsetting pro-Trump viewers ensured the presser was aired and on-air criticism of it not tolerated.
Per the brief:
But while Fox did not cut away this time, then-White House correspondent Kristen Fisher did fact-check the claims made by Powell and Giuliani. Fox’s executives were not pleased. See Ex.118, Fisher 68:20-69:8; Ex.244. Fisher received a call from her boss, Bryan Boughton, immediately after in which he “emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it,” and that Fisher “needed to do a better job of…—this is a quote—‘respecting our audience.’” Ex.118, Fisher 35:21- 36:24; see Ex.245 & Ex.246 (Fisher texts about being “punished for doing my job” after fact-checking Giuliani).
Fox News anchor Dana Perino also criticized the presser on air, which allegedly led to Scott “screaming about Dana’s show and their reaction to the Rudy presser.”
Tucker called Trump “demonic”
Days after the election, Carlson fumed in texts to his (now former) producer Alex Pfeiffer about the Arizona call. “We worked really hard to build what we have,” he said. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”
“It’s a hard needle to thread, but I really think many on ‘our side’ are being reckless demagogues right now,” Pfeiffer replied.
In response, Carlson conveyed his fear that Trump could “destroy” his hit show if they “play it wrong.”
“Of course they are. We’re not going to follow them,” Carlson said, adding: “What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
On January 6, as the mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Carlson texted Pfeiffer that Trump is “a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us.”
Top Fox hosts and executives knew the election claims were bunk
A key argument made by Dominion is that Fox News hosts and executives knew the election claims were false and allowed them to be aired anyway, a must if the company wants to prove Fox acted with actual malice.
Private texts from top Fox News figures demonstrate they did concede the claims were rubbish — in private.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson wrote to Ingraham on November 18.
Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
“Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” Carlson lamented.
The next night, Carlson did call out Powell for not sending him any evidence to support her claims. It was a rare rebuke of the election conspiracy theory on Fox News prime time, and one that was hedged to death by Carlson’s argument that it was nonetheless reasonable for viewers to believe fraud was afoot.
Murdoch expressed a similar sentiment to the Fox hosts. After watching the Giuliani-Powell presser, he texted Scott: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”
Fox News executives described their own hosts as “crazy”
Dominion brief obtained comments from a series of Fox News executives about their hosts.
Per the brief:
Beyond Fox’s guests, Fox executives and other insiders also referred to Fox’s own hosts as inherently unreliable when discussing their reporting about the 2020 election:
Fox executive Gary Schreier, on Maria Bartiromo: “The problem is she has gop conspiracy theorists in her ear and they use her for their message sometimes.”
Fox President Jay Wallace: “the North Koreans do a more nuanced show” than Lou Dobbs.
Fox President Jay Wallace, when Bret Baier suggested Fox buy Parler: “we can barely contain Dobbs—imagine all the crazy we’d be responsible for.”
Fox executive Porter Berry: “he’s not crazy like Dobbs.”
Fox producer Jeff Field: Dobbs “turned a blind eye” because he was “so committed” to Donald Trump, and the fact that he “was ultra MAGA [] would be guiding editorial.”
Tucker Carlson: “Lou was reckless.”
Jerry Andrews: “Jeanine is just as nuts.”
Justin Wells (executive producer for Carlson): “[S]he is crazy.”
Brian Farley on Carlson and Hannity: “crazy Tucker and crazier Hannity.”
Fox Corporation Senior Vice President Raj Shah on Hannity: “Hannity is
a little out there.”
Lou Dobbs was eventually dumped by Fox News in 2021, days after Smartmatic, another voting systems company subject to conspiracy theories, sued the network for defamation.
