Tucker Carlson, other Fox News stars privately mocked Trump's stolen election claims, Dominion suit shows

Tucker Carlson, other Fox News stars privately mocked Trump's stolen election claims, Dominion suit shows

Tucker Carlson, other Fox News stars privately mocked Trump's stolen election claims, Dominion suit shows

news.yahoo.com

Fox News star hosts and top executives privately disparaged former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even as Fox News promoted some of those same fraud claims on the air, Dominion Voting Systems argues in court papers filed Thursday. The filing is part of Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, in Delaware State Superior Court. The suit is scheduled to go to trial in April.

Dominion's partially redacted filing includes text messages and depositions from Fox founder Rupert Murdoch and other top executives, and between Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity. "Not a single Fox witness testified that they believe any of the allegations about Dominion are true," Dominion says in its 192-page filing. The document alleges that Fox News, losing viewers angry over its early coverage of Trump's loss, highlighted the false fraud claims to keep up with Newsmax, OANN, and other unabashedly pro-Trump networks.

Texts from Carlson, for one prominent example, would seem to bolster that case. Carlson referred to Trump as a "demonic force" after the election and called pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell an "unguided missile" who is "dangerous as hell" and was obviously "lying" about vote-fraud conspiracy theories. "Our viewers are good people and they believe it," he added.

But when Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked Trump's vote fraud claims in a tweet, Carlson texted Ingraham and Hannity: "Please get her fired. Seriously ... It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke." Heinrich had deleted her tweet by the following morning.

Dominion has to prove that Fox executives and TV personalities purposefully "spread and endorsed" allegations they knew to be false, harming Dominion's business and reputation. In a countersuit also filed Tuesday, Fox Corp. argues that Dominion is seeking an exaggerated amount of money to try and stifle constitutionally protected speech. Fox says Trump's election-fraud claims were objectively newsworthy and got balanced coverage.

Proving that Fox acted with "actual malice" — knowingly spreading harmful lies or failing to do due diligence — is a difficult burden to meet and often fails in court, The New York Times reports. "But legal experts said Dominion's arguments were stronger than most," thanks to damning text messages and the fruit of eight months of depositions.

 

[GamerGateSurvivor]

Have you watched FOX news? Like the entirety of it? Most of it is thinly veneered Neo-Con talking points trying to convince you with vague notions of Patriotism. Tucker is the only one who really goes off the plantation, and that's earned him the ire of the entire establishment.

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Imagine being a New York Times intern thinking you're going to get your foot in the door at one of the world's top publications only to have some guy tell you to watch a thousand episodes of Tucker Carlson and analyze his facial expressions.

 

[Megaton Punch]

I know most KFers jerk-off to Fox News, but this is a pretty big deal.

>being such an eternal boomer that you think everyone right wing must watch Fox News

A real Thunderdomesman gets his news from Hitler speeches cut up so it sounds like he's reading BBC Pidgin articles.

 

[Just_Somebody]

Didn't CNN's Van Jones also say the Trump-Russia story was a colossal nothingburger? Yet he still pushed it?

https://youtu.be/zsTbrFhEFFo

I assume the difference is you need a bogus "investigation" of said nothingburger.

 

[Ser Prize]

Seemed Powell was hoping to get some kind of discovery going that would allow them to look into the voting irregularities and obtain evidence, then the courts took the position that she needed evidence that no one on Trump's side had any legal ability to obtain (hence going to court over it).

I've never heard a better way they could have handled it, since the whole situation is just sorta weird for how many government officials were fine just letting all allegations go undebunked.

The funniest shit was them claiming it was both too early to look into it and too late at the same time.

 

[pwnest injun]

It's like they completely forgot the months after the election where FOX lost half of their audience to Newsmax because Newsmax would push fraud claims without evidence, and Tucker, among others, told Trump's lawyers, to their faces, to pony up evidence or fuck off.

 

[SBG]

Today the Judge Sanctioned Fox News for withholding evidence in the case. I know most KFers jerk-off to Fox News, but this is a pretty big deal. The Court case in not going well for Fox News at all and in all likelihood there is going to be a new round of Discovery that is going to tie Murdoch closer to Fox News Management than he wants to be tied.

This case is going to shake how we receive news in the United States and have some pretty large ramifications. It is a fascinating case.

I hadn't been following it much at all, it looked like they were treating any attempt at impartiality with regards to reporting on the election fraud as though it was the reporters outright lying. That about right?

The funniest shit was them claiming it was both too early to look into it and too late at the same time.

It's made it helpful to tell if someone is a brainwashed hack. So much ridiculously dishonest shit that happened that you're either lying or an idiot if you think the election went honestly.

 

[johnny dollars]

Tucker is the only one who really goes off the plantation, and that's earned him the ire of the entire establishment.

I'm surprised Tucker even stays on Fox News. He'd probably have more success off of it. I've never given him much attention solely because he's on Fox, but he may actually be more based than I gave him credit for.

 

[Puff]

Carlson referred to Trump as a "demonic force" after the election and called pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell an "unguided missile" who is "dangerous as hell" and was obviously "lying" about vote-fraud conspiracy theories. "Our viewers are good people and they believe it," he added.

Aren't those some suspiciously short quotes?

 

[MadStan]

>being such an eternal boomer that you think everyone right wing must watch Fox News

Pretty much. I'm probably wrong and being a cunt.

I hadn't been following it much at all, it looked like they were treating any attempt at impartiality with regards to reporting on the election fraud as though it was the reporters outright lying. That about right?



It's made it helpful to tell if someone is a brainwashed hack. So much ridiculously dishonest shit that happened that you're either lying or an idiot if you think the election went honestly.

If Dominion had their suit based on the reporters lying a bit it would not have gotten any traction because let's face it, we know reporters and news anchors twist most things a little and there have been law suits that have established essentially "zest" into the reporting isn't defamation. Also, reporting on someone else's false statement isn't defamation if you don't know it to be false. Dominion has a very very high bar to prove defamation and it seems like they have met it and then some more by showing Fox:

1. Had a commitment to investigating the claims.
2. Did look into the claims.
3. They new they were false.
4. Aired them anyways for profit.
5. Were informed of their known lying.
6. Continued to do it anyways for viewers and profit.
7. Has had their brand nearly mortally wounded by the defamation and has suffered genuine loss (not just "reputation").
8. Has acted to conceal discovery documents that show their actions.

I'd give Dominion a 90% chance of winning the case; but wouldn't care to comment on the amount, even if they got their 1.6 Billion it isn't enough of a wound to destroy Fox that's for certain. Fox is a giant machine.

Fox has recently settled one defamation case out of court regarding false election statements (relates to a business man abroad), and have a rather zealous lawsuit from another election machine system maker that's overly zealous in the amount sought.

If Trump wins 2024, Fox will be his bitches or they will be ruined.

This case has ramifications that are hard to overstate for the media of the United States and in reality I think deep down most tech companies and even other media companies hope Fox actually wins because the upshot is if they Dominion win this case the precedent has been set that:

1. If your platform has reasons to suspect content is false &
2. Looks into the content and determines it is likely false or fears it is false and deliberately fails to investigate &
3. Allows it to persist then you could be up for being sued for real.

Also, if Fox loses the case, there will be vicious lawsuits filed (already there is one, but I think it is from frankly, some little shareholder punk looking to make a name for himself who hasn't suffered real loss) from large shareholders that will demand corporate governance changes in Fox and attempt to oust the Murdochs from their own throne.

 

[SBG]

2. Did look into the claims.
3. They new they were false.

This seems weird when for anyone to decide when the courts were shutting down requests to look into the claims saying they had to be looked into first.

Aren't those some suspiciously short quotes?

A little, but if you tracked Tucker for a while he’d been seething about Trump quite a few times over the years. Like when protesters came to his house and knocked on his door, Tucker popped up on Fox Business almost foaming at the mouth blaming Trump for the protesters breaking his door down (never seemed to happen).

Also he’d been leaking to left wing media for years with these exaggerated stories, he was one of the media’s best sources of gossip. So the quotes wouldn’t be out of character for Tucker as he’s prone to gossiping and exaggeration.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

I love how articles like this always put the "false" before talking about Trump's claims. Like they are afraid the normies reading will suddenly take it seriously if they forget to add it and they must always reiterate it or else the spell is broken and Trump's mind control takes over.

I also love how the entire circular logic of voter fraud in the US works. You can't prove election fraud because there is no evidence, you cannot investigate it because you need more than circumstantial proof, since all you have is circumstantial there is no need to search for evidence, so it obviously never happened and never will happen.

 

[MadStan]

I love how articles like this always put the "false" before talking about Trump's claims. Like they are afraid the normies reading will suddenly take it seriously if they forget to add it and they must always reiterate it or else the spell is broken and Trump's mind control takes over.

I also love how the entire circular logic of voter fraud in the US works. You can't prove election fraud because there is no evidence, you cannot investigate it because you need more than circumstantial proof, since all you have is circumstantial there is no need to search for evidence, so it obviously never happened and never will happen.

Oh you can investigate it. The narrative there was election fraud but alas we can’t investigate it has been thoroughly debunked . Sounds good for the audience who “want to believe” but isn’t actually true.