“Yes, they endorsed.”
Those are the words of Fox Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, acknowledging under oath that some Fox News and Fox Business personalities pushed the narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden.
This revelation comes courtesy of the latest filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News and parent company Fox Corp, which dropped on Monday.
In the full 212-page filing, released on Monday and shared by The New York Times and other media outlets, Murdoch acknowledged that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs endorsed the false claims and shared them with their respective audiences.
Earlier in the deposition, Murdoch did, however, push back on the assertion that all of Fox was pushing the false narrative, instead seemingly pinning it on a few hosts. “Not Fox, No. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria, as commentators,” said Murdoch.
Here’s Rupert Murdoch conceding in a deposition that some Fox News hosts endorsed the notion the 2020 election was stolen. pic.twitter.com/xXs4u8xt29
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) February 27, 2023
Murdoch did show some remorse for how the news network handled the situation saying, “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight.”
The Fox boss also confirmed that he could have told network executives to stop running MyPillow advertisements from CEO Mike Lindell, “But I’m
not about to.” And when asked why the network gave Lindell—who continues to lie about Dominion and the election—a platform, Murdoch agreed with the statement that “it is not red or blue, it is green,” per the filing.
Other revelations from the filing involving Murdoch and Fox News show that he responded to an email from former House Speaker Paul Ryan saying that Hannity had “been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.”
Murdoch also emailed Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott before the 2020 election, asking her to have Hannity say positive things about Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham. “We cannot lose the Senate if at all possible.”
Fox News Media continues to shoot down the slow drip of new information regarding its inner workings. It responded to Dominion’s most recent filing by saying the voting technology company’s view of the law is “extreme,” and that it is “cherry-picking soundbites, omitting key context and mischaracterizing the record.”
Fox released a 164-page opposition brief of its own on Monday, adding the following on the record statement:
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims. Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting, and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”
Interestingly, on CNN This Morning, CNN media analyst Sara Fischer said an unnamed Fox News executive told her they think the network will lose the Dominion suit.
“It is a weak defense,” says @sarafischer of Fox News defense in Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit. “I have sources that say they think they will lose this case.” pic.twitter.com/hi9cDDGAcB
— CNN This Morning (@CNNThisMorning) February 28, 2023