Fox News anchors knew the vote-fraud conspiracies they repeated ad nauseam after the 2020 presidential election were false, but pushed them anyway in an attempt to boost the right-wing network’s ratings, newly released court documents say.
The 192-page document, produced as part of an ongoing $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, contains what it says are comments and text messages between senior Fox News executives and the network’s flagship hosts.
Privately, the document purports to show that top network decision-makers and on-air talent criticized various allegations of voter fraud and lies, which they then spread through their own show.
“By the way, Sidney Powell is lying. I took it. This is crazy,” Fox star Tucker Carlson reportedly wrote to host Laura Ingraham in November 2020, referring to Donald Trump’s campaign lawyer.
According to the court document, Ingraham replied, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Same thing with Rudy [Giuliani].”
“This is incredibly offensive to me,” Carlson reportedly wrote. “Our viewers are good people and I believe that.”
Days later, in a message to someone whose name was redacted in the court document, Carlson allegedly said it was “incredibly reckless” to claim Dominion had rigged the election when there was no evidence or documents showing that did. . “As you know, there isn’t,” Carlson added.
It’s a strikingly different tone than he struck in a group message that included fellow host Sean Hannity, in which Carlson attacked a Fox News reporter who verified a Trump tweet about Dominion. In that message, according to the court document, he called for the journalist to be fired.
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In a group message between Ingraham, Hannity and Carlson on Nov. 12, Carlson reportedly highlighted a tweet by Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich that quoted “senior election infrastructure officials” to confirm that “there is no evidence that any system vote was canceled or lost. notes, the notes have changed or been compromised in any way.”
“Please fire her,” Carlson wrote to Ingraham and Hannity, according to the document. “Seriously… What the hell? I’m actually shocked… It has to end immediately, like tonight. It does measurable damage to the company. The share price is falling. It’s not a joke.
By morning, Heinrich had deleted the verification tweet.
In other private excerpts, Carlson reportedly called the Trump campaign’s claims — and the aides who spread them — “ridiculous” and “completely disingenuous.”
Other executives and on-air personalities reportedly used similar language to describe the claims and the people promoting them, including Hannity (“F’ing lunatics”), anchor Dana Perino (“nuts”), host Maria Bartiromo (“cooky “). and Raj Shah, Senior Vice President of Fox Corporation (“MID BLOWINGLY NUTS”).
According to the filing, in December 2020 — as rival network Newsmax leaned into voter fraud and Fox News found itself falling behind and losing viewers — Fox News senior vice president Bill Sammon remarked to a colleague, political editor Chris Stirewalt: “It’s amazing how bad ratings make good journalists do bad things.”
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from HuffPost, but in a statement to the New York Times, the network accused Dominion of “mischaracterizing the record, cherry-picking quotes, removing key context and spilling considerable ink on the facts. ” . which are irrelevant under the black character principles of defamation law.
The trial, to be heard by Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, is expected to begin in mid-April.
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