A slew of Fox News personalities and executives were aware the 2020 election conspiracy theory touted by former President Donald Trump and his allies was bogus even as the network broadcast the claims over and over in the weeks that followed, court records show.
(Bloomberg) — A slew of Fox News personalities and executives were aware the 2020 election conspiracy theory touted by former President Donald Trump and his allies was bogus even as the network broadcast the claims over and over in the weeks that followed, court records show.
Fox News host Dana Perino described the theory in texts and emails at the time as “total bs,” “insane,” and “nonsense,” according to court documents made public Thursday. Chris Stirewalt, who was Fox News politics editor at the time, said in a sworn deposition that he believed that within days of the election, “there was no way anybody could think that Donald Trump had really won.”
Sean Hannity, one of Fox’s biggest stars, sent a text message at the time saying the architect of the conspiracy theory, former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, was a “F’ing lunatic,” according to the filing. Hannity later testified he “did not believe it for one second.” Powell repeatedly appeared on Fox anyway.
The details come from numerous depositions and thousands of pages of evidence gathered by Dominion Voting Systems Inc., the voting-machine company falsely accused of rigging the election against Trump. The company’s $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News and its parent Fox Corp. is set to go to trial in April in Delaware.
Fox News said in a statement that Dominion “mischaracterized” the record and “cherry-picked” quotes that were presented without key context.
The vast conspiracy theory held that Dominion flipped millions of votes away from Trump in cooperation with corrupt Democrats, foreign hackers and software linked deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. The claim helped trigger the Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters and remains part of the former president’s stump speeches as he makes a third run for the White House.
‘They Were False’
About 10 days after the election, Laura Ingraham’s producer probed the claims about Dominion “and easily concluded they were false,” Dominion said.
“Ingraham herself testified that she has no basis to believe Dominion committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 Presidential Election or that it is owned by a company founded in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chavez,” Dominion said in the filing.
Dominion said the internal Fox emails and text messages support its claim that the network pivoted to coverage of the conspiracy theory to retain and attract conservative viewers who were upset when Fox became the first network on election night to call the vote count in Arizona for Biden.
“Getting creamed by CNN!” Rupert Murdoch wrote to Fox News Chief Executive Officer Suzanne Scott, according to the filing. “Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.” Hannity told Fox TV host Steve Doocy that the network had created a “major backlash” with the audience, stating: “You don’t piss off the base.”
Losing Trust
Fox said Dominion’s court filing “takes an extreme and unsupported view of defamation law and rests on an accounting of the facts that has no basis in the record.” The network also argues Dominion has failed to prove it suffered any financial damages as a result of its coverage.
According to Dominion’s filing, TV host Tucker Carlson texted his producer with a warning about the potential rise of right-wing competitor Newsmax after Fox News joined others in calling the entire election for Biden: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real….an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.”
That’s when Maria Bartiromo started hosting Powell. She did so despite getting emails from Powell that cited just one source for her claims, someone who explained that she gets her information from experiencing something “like time-travel in a semi-conscious state,” allowing her to “see what others don’t see, and hear what others don’t hear,” according to the filing.
“The Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it,” Powell’s source said in the email entitled “Election Fraud Info.”
“At her deposition, Bartiromo admitted that this email is ‘not evidence’ for Powell’s claims, and indeed was ‘nonsense’ and ‘inherently unreliable,’” Dominion said in the filing.
‘Dangerous As Hell’
Carlson said in a text after the election that Powell was an “unguided missile” and “dangerous as hell,” according to the filing. He also said privately that “Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud.
Powell didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Even so, Carlson would later host another well-known proponent of the same conspiracy theory, MyPillow Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mike Lindell. It was all part of a pattern of allowing guests to make false claims to beef up ratings, Dominion says.
“Privately, Fox’s hosts and executives knew that Donald Trump lost the election and that he needed to concede,” Dominion said. “But Fox viewers heard a different story — repeatedly.”
Murdoch weighed in on the conspiracy theory as he watched an unhinged Nov. 19, 2020, press conference by Powell and then-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who attempted to explain the alleged election scheme to mainstream audiences.
“Watching Giuliani!” Murdoch said in the subject heading of an email, according to Dominion’s filing. “Really crazy stuff,” he wrote. “And damaging.”
Murdoch on Jan. 5, 2021, told Scott that there had been suggestions that the network’s prime time coverage should indicate that “the election is over and Joe Biden won” and that such a statement “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.”
That didn’t happen.
Thursday’s heavily redacted filing by Dominion — a so-called motion for summary judgment — asks the judge to grant victory to the company on its defamation claims without a trial based on the strength of the evidence.
Fox News also filed a redacted motion for summary judgment, saying the suit isn’t warranted because the network is protected by First Amendment and was covering valid news regardless.
“Fox News fulfilled its commitment to inform fully and comment fairly,” the company said in the filing. “Some hosts viewed the President’s claims skeptically; others viewed them hopefully; all recognized them as profoundly newsworthy.”
(Updates with details of text from Sean Hannity. An earlier version of the story corrected the court filing schedule.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.