Dominion Voting Systems: A Case Study of Trump’s Attempt to Overturn President Joe Biden’s Election Campaign and his 2020 Insurrection

The case exposed Fox News as dishonest and disrespectful, while showing contempt for its large audience, and it has battered the reputation of the network.

Dominion Voting Systems alleged that Fox stars, executives, journalists and guests defamed the election tech company for segments in which wild and spurious conspiracies held it had switched votes for then-President Donald Trump to Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

The outcome of the trial, however, is not likely to dramatically change the dishonest way in which Fox News operates. Murdoch has a profit engine in the channel and is dependent on its viewers to keep its business model going.

The Delaware courtroom drama is likely to cause a stir because it will show how truth has become a political commodity and that a business model that depends on spinning an alternative reality is still possible. It is not clear if Trump will end up paying a significant personal or political price for his role in the fraudulent election.

The idea that Trump’s claims – echoed by his aides and allies on Fox and sometimes by the channel’s personalities – had any merit will not even make it to first base in the trial. In one remarkable development during pre-trial hearings, presiding Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that jurors did not even need to decide one key issue: whether Fox’s claims about Dominion were true.

The former president may face indictment in the probes into his attempt to overturn PresidentJoe Biden’s election victory by a district attorney in Georgia, and his conduct in the leadup to the US Capitol insurrection. The testimony was taken by the House select committee last year during Democrats control of the chamber.

The falsehood of a corrupt election still forms the bedrock of Trump’s campaign to win back the White House. The idea that Trump was thrown out of office on the basis that he did not win in 2020 has been popular with many of his supporters.

It’s also questionable whether viewers of conservative media will hear much about the trial and get sufficient information that might convince them to change their minds about 2020.

Trump’s insistence that the election was stained by fraud is giving some senior Republicans nightmares as they try to rebound from his loss in 2020 and work through their disappointment at the lack of a “red wave” in the last year’s midterms, despite winning the House.

“I think any candidate, to be able to win, is to talk about what we’re for, focus on the future, not look in the rearview mirror,” Kemp told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.

Fox News and the Establishment of Malice: The Case against Fox News in the Run-up to the 2020 Jan. 6 Reaction on Trump and Biden

The constitutional process that gave Trump and Biden power was marred by violence but the court proceedings against Fox show that the country’s instruments of accountability remain intact.

But the run-up to the trial has been a catalog of embarrassments and reversals for both the network and the broader premise that there is anything to Trump’s false claims.

It’s not the whole story when you say “what Fox did was protected by the First Amendment.” It’s protected by the First Amendment if you can’t demonstrate actual malice,” he said.

Fox News did acknowledge in its statement that falsehoods were broadcast. But top anchors at the right-wing talk channel will not be required as part of the settlement to acknowledge the lies broadcast in the wake of the 2020 election on air.

Fox personalities including Pirro and Mark Levin ginned up viewer anger ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, rally headlined by Trump at the Washington Mall to protest the scheduled congressional certification of Biden’s victory. Fox was very worried about what would happen when the US Capitol was besieged by Trump’s supporters. The attack on Congress was arranged in part by the FBI and Antifa, according to Carlson. There is no evidence to support the claims.

When Fox News Fails: a Moment of Candor in the First Major Rally of Donald Trump’s 2020 Campaign, and Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Fox News

This is, perhaps, not surprising. In a moment of candor, Trump told the world his strategy when he was in office.

Be with us. He asked his supporters at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City to not believe the fake news from these people. “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

“We won in 2016. In the first major rally of his campaign in March, Trump said that he won by much more in 2020 than before.

If you look in the mirror too long, you will end up running into somebody, and that is not going to be good.

Yet the fact that Trump, according to many polls, remains the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024 and is still wildly popular with conservative grassroots voters suggests that it will take far more than a courtroom display to restore the truth about 2020.

At the GOP’s spring retreat over the weekend in Tennessee, a swing state Republican governor told donors that future political success depended on Fox News.

Despite his criticisms of Fox, Sununu does not appear to disdain the network. He appeared on America’s Newsroom Monday morning, less than a day after his comments in Nashville.

The private communication between the stars and executives of Fox shows that Fox is an important part of Republican politics and the conservative movement.

Sununu told the Republican donors that they need to think about the long game. “We get ourselves tied up in issues. I’m not saying they’re not important, but they ain’t making the team bigger.”

Gop Governor Says Fox News To Break Out Of Its Echo Chamber: A Pedestrian’s Representation of the Bar’s Legal Team

He said that the party had an appealing “product” that appealed to voters including younger voters with low taxes and local governmental control.

Sununu said that he had been talking to the leadership at Fox all the time.

“I saw a panel discussion with four panelists on Fox and they all were very clear about what they thought…” They’re talking in an echo chamber What’s your plan to grow the team?

NPR obtained an audio recording of an excerpt of the talk from Lauren Windsor, a liberal activist and consultant, who acquired them from an attendee. The governor’s remarks were verified by Vihstadt.

At a delicate moment for Fox, Sununu’s remarks come. Its lawyers are simultaneously girding for a six-week trial, set to begin Tuesday morning after a one-day delay, and negotiating over a possible settlement with Dominion’s legal team.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170513194/gop-governor-says-hes-urged-fox-news-to-break-out-of-its-echo-chamber

Murdoch’s theoretical investigation of Fox Corp. During the 2020 election campaign, Hannity and Bartiromo texted Bannon and Murdoch: “I can’t take this”

It has been known for a long time that Murdoch wanted to influence elections in his native Australia, the UK and the US. Former Republican vice presidential candidate and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan sits on the corporate board of Fox Corp. The network is run by its corporate parent. (He was among those who argued that Fox had to release its embrace of election conspiracy theories).

Trump was able to pick from a list of Fox personality for his administration. Fox stars Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and others advised him off the air. (Dobbs would be forced out a day after another election tech company, Smartmatic, sued Fox in a $2.7 billion defamation claim.)

In response to the request for comment, a spokesman for Fox said that surveys suggested that its audience was larger than anyone else’s and included the most Democrats and independents.

Back in November 2020, NPR reported that Hannity invited RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on his show on the night before Biden would be projected to win the presidency.

An internal GOP memo to prepare McDaniel reflected full knowledge of what would be asked, setting out the specifics of the show’s lengthy opening segment — including its guests and subjects — and Hannity’s main points. They investigated suspicions of voter fraud.

In late September 2020, Murdoch warned Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, that the Biden campaign ads were better. The media magnate followed up with a new email the same day that his former wife helped reconcile him and his wife, the president’s son-in-law.

Biden is in same football this Sunday at 1.0 pm. The game is very good. Or I think so! Will send it,” Murdoch said in an email made public through legal proceedings.

On November 10th, a few days after Fox projected Biden’s win, star host Maria Bartiromo texted former Trump former chief political adviser Steve Bannon, “Omg I’m so depressed. I can’t take this”

Bannon had no plans to stand still. He laid out a multi-point plan that included delegitimizing Biden as president, Republicans’ winning both U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, and getting Bartiromo elected to the U.S. Senate in New York – all while prepping Trump for a 2024 White House bid.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170513194/gop-governor-says-hes-urged-fox-news-to-break-out-of-its-echo-chamber

Investigating Fox and Smartmatic for the Decrees of Rupert Murdoch on a Nov 14 2020 Pro-Trump Rally

On Nov 14, 2020, Fox Corp. executive chairman Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s son, warned chief executive Suzanne Scott about the tone of Fox’s coverage of a pro-Trump rally.

“News guys have to be careful how they cover this rally,” Lachlan Murdoch wrote. “So far some of the side comments are slightly anti, and they shouldn’t be. The narrative should be that it’s a huge celebration of the president.

On November 16, Rupert Murdoch affirmed his interest in aiding the Republican drive to win the Senate in an email to Scott: “Trump will concede eventually and we should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can.”

The CEO of the company that sells voting equipment said at a press conference that Fox lied about his company and caused enormous damage. “Nothing can ever make up for that.”

The private text messages and emails released as part of the case show that the executives were not convinced by the debunked conspiracy theories on the air.

Fox still faces a lawsuit by another election tech company, Smartmatic. In a statement to Ben Smith, Smartmatic said it would still fight with Fox. Some of the damage caused by Fox has been exposed by Dominion. Smartmatic will expose the rest,” attorney Erik Connolly said, according to Smith’s Twitter feed. “Smartmatic remains committed to clearing its name, recouping the significant damage done to the company, and holding Fox accountable for undermining democracy.”

But even with these setbacks, Fox may still prevail. The jury verdict must be unanimous. The legal team is filled with seasoned appellate attorneys who could potentially work on both the Delaware Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court.

The settlement in the lawsuit was announced Tuesday in court.

The Trump-Dominion-Fox Deal: A Case Study in a Congressional Defamation of the 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate

Your presence was very important. The judge told the jurors that the parties wouldn’t have been able to solve their situation without them.

The trial in Delaware was about to begin when the settlement was brokered. After swearing in the jury, proceedings in court were paused for hours, again sparking rumors that a deal was quietly in the works.

Right-wing networks Newsmax and OAN are among the companies that have pending lawsuits against them.

Fox News and its parent company Fox Corp. have struck a deal averting a trial in the blockbuster defamation suit filed by the election tech company Dominion Voting Systems over spurious claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential race.

“As much evidence as we’ve seen, there still is plenty more that hasn’t been made public. In a trial, the documents and statements that have been redacted, which are likely to constitute some of the most damning evidence against Fox, would have been revealed,” said Tom Wienner, a retired Michigan corporate litigator who has been following the case closely at NPR’s request.

The logical conclusion of a legal clash was always a settlement, even if it was clear that the statements were wrong in real time.

The legal team for Dominion wanted to cause maximum pain to Fox and its owners so as to get as large a settlement as possible and also make a public apology. For Fox and its controlling owners, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, it was worth the cost to pay for the spectacle to go away.

Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott warned her colleagues against running fact-checking segments by the network’s own reporters debunking lies about election fraud, even as it gave such bogus claims acres of prime real estate.

Primetime stars Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity privately trashed the people who lied about Dominion on their network’s airwaves and yet also trashed the reporters who sought to hold them accountable for those lies.

Murdoch said that the star supported the lies being peddled by Trump and Fox itself, but he didn’t believe it for a second.

Maria Bartiromo put on an attorney spinning pro- Trump conspiracy theories and insinuation, without evidence, fraud by Dominion on the basis of a memo whose author called her own allegations “sort of crazy.”

The judge, known for his even-keeled demeanor on his bench over the years, repeatedly lost his equanimity with Fox’s blue-ribbon legal team, as the trial neared.

Just a week before the opening arguments, Davis told Fox attorneys that Murdoch held the title “executive chairman” at Fox News, suggesting he had more authority over the network’s coverage than was allowed. Fox said the title was not meaningful for the network’s founder. The special master would be tasked with investigating Fox’s lawyers and whether or not there had been any misrepresentations to the court.

And Davis warned Fox attorneys “don’t make me look like an idiot,” after they asked that the 92-year-old Murdoch not be subjected to the rigors of being forced to travel to Wilmington to testify in person. Davis noted Murdoch had just announced in the gossip pages of his own New York Post the intention to split time among his four homes in Montana, Los Angeles, New York City and London with his new bride-to-be. Murdoch called off the wedding, which was to be his fifth, not long after, which did not seem to mitigate Davis’ irritation.

The Murdochs have paid in the past. They agreed to settlements of over $900 million, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in hacking and phone-hacking scandals at News Corp.’s British tabloids.

The network also paid the family of the slain Democratic party aide Seth Rich an undisclosed settlement worth millions of dollars just before Hannity and former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs were set to be questioned by the Riches’ attorneys under oath.

Similarly, executives at the Walt Disney Co. and ABC breathed a sigh of relief after settling a case in 2017, in which ABC News had referred to a kind of processed beef as “pink slime.” That’s because the amount parent company Disney paid — $177 million — was a fraction of its possible $5.7 billion exposure under South Dakota law. ABC did not retract the story.

Fox News, Smartmatic, and the Murdochs: Illusions About the Extraction of Biden’s Arizona Voting Democratic Presidential Candidate

When it comes to defamation, says Jane Kirtley, a former executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, there are two elements for media outlets in deciding to settle, one immediate and one grander.

Broadly speaking, she says, media organizations want to sidestep any chance for a judge or appellate court to revisit the very high standard of proving “actual malice,” established in a landmark 1964 ruling in a case involving The New York Times. News organizations are favored by the law. Yet several U.S. Supreme Court Justices have expressed an interest in altering or reforming that standard.

Kirtley is worried about whether or not Fox and the Murdochs will accept a continued parade of revelations even if they don’t affect the outcome of the trial.

On election night, Fox News’s decision desk projected that Democratic presidential nominee Biden would win the pivotal state of Arizona. Trump and his advisers worked very hard to convince the network to change it’s mind. The network and the Murdochs stood by it.

After the blowback from Trump’s inner circle and his own viewers, anchor Martha MacCallum wondered if such projections could take audience sentiment into account in the future.

Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon and political director Chris Stire of the projection of Arizona were forced out at the request of Murdoch. Fox called Sammon’s departure a retirement and Stirewalt’s part of a larger restructuring. Neither characterization was true.

After a $2.7 billion defamation suit was filed against Fox, another voting tech company, Smartmatic,falsely accused the Fox Broadcasting Company of participating in fraud to affect the election of Donald Trump, and that resulted in Dobbs being fired the next day. According to company officials, Smartmatic only actively conducted business in Los Angeles County during the 2020 elections, and its lawsuit remains pending in federal court. Fox said Dobbs’ hasty exit was part of a post-election rejiggering.

The journalists were laid off. And Fox News turned over two hours of evening programming that had been reserved for news shows — at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. — to conservative talk show host Jesse Watters and conservative comedian Greg Gutfeld. The weekday show ” The Five” promoted her from the weekend hosting slot to co-host. The news shows were shifted to the fringes, so that MacCallum’s show could be seen before midnight.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/18/1170339114/fox-news-settles-blockbuster-defamation-lawsuit-with-dominion-voting-systems

An Attorney General’s Tale About Sued by Defamation: How Howard Kurtz, Howard Fox, and Robin Wallace Left the Fox Network

Ronald Chen, an authority on media law, said that litigation is often not the way for either of them to get complete satisfaction in defamation suits.

“By law, there’s a winner and a loser,” Chen says. “And where there’s a high risk for both the plaintiff and the defendant, settlement is very often the way both sides are both able to claim some type of victory.”

Fox’s chief media host and correspondent, Howard Kurtz, barely touched on the case. He finally told viewers he had been forbidden from covering it by his corporate bosses.

When Baier, Fox’s chief political anchor, repeatedly pitched devoting an hour-long special to debunking myths of election fraud, executives effectively ignored him: Baier did not receive a firm response.

The anchor left the network after getting no support from Fox and being attacked on the air by Carlson. Wallace left Fox in late 2021 after Carlson’s lies about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Baier was against Carlson’s special programs about insurrectionists. But Baier protested quietly, in private. And he stuck around.

Dominion vs. Fox Corporation: Resolving Doubts About Voting Machines in a Republican Counties

What is Dominion asking for? The company is going for over a billion dollars in damages. They say Fox is damaging its reputation due to its lies on the air. CNN reported that there are growing doubts about voting machines in counties that are heavily Republican.

What are the trial logistical issues? The trial is expected to last five to six weeks and will be overseen by the Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis. A panel of 12 jurors and 12 alternates is being seated.

Cameras are not allowed in the courtroom and there will not be any video of the proceedings. There will not be any pictures taken inside the courtroom.

Who is expected to testify? Expected witness include Fox Corporation executives Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch; Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace; prominent TV hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and Bret Baier, among others.

Both sides want to hear testimony from their experts who specialize in election statistics, the security of voting machines, journalism ethics, and more.