Caught on Tape: Trump Official Told Fox News Dominion Voting Machines Were Legit

MSNBC released new audio of Rudy Giuliani admitting to Fox News’ host Maria Bartiromo that he had difficulty backing claims of Dominion Voting Systems’ involvement in election fraud. The recordings, revealed on Wednesday, also include audio of a Trump campaign official saying that when the Secretary of State did his Georgia audit, “there weren’t any physical issues with [Dominion] machines on those inspections.”

The release of the audio comes in the throes of Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit over Fox’s attempts to link the company to nonexistent election fraud. Earlier on Wednesday, Delaware Judge Eric Davis sanctioned Fox News after the company was caught withholding evidence from Dominion’s lawyers, including recorded conversations with Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.

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Abby Grossberg, a former Tucker Carlson producer who has claimed the network coerced her testimony regarding the lawsuit, provided the recordings to the court.

In a statement to Rolling Stone Wednesday, a Fox News spokesperson said: “As our lawyer explained in court today, we learned that there might be responsive audio recordings for the first time on March 20 from Grossberg’s errata sheet. Our attorneys then accessed the forensic image of Grossberg’s phone and reviewed the recordings, which were produced within 15 days of first learning of their existence.”

MSNBC’s Alex Wagner aired parts of the recordings on her show Wednesday, explaining that Grossberg and her attorneys gave her the tapes. The first recording featured an off-air conversation between Giuliani and Bartiromo on Nov. 8, 2020.

“I’m going to be asking you for as much evidence as you can tell us about these lawsuits. Whatever you can tell us in terms of evidence would be really helpful,” says Bartiromo.

“I can tell you exactly what we have,” says Giuliani, who admits when asked about Dominion’s software, says “that’s a little harder.”

Wagner also shared an audio snippet between a Fox News producer and Trump campaign official on December 5, 2020. “Have any of the machines been looked at? [Steve Bannon] had said that one was looked at in Georgia,” the producer asks, which prompts the official to go off the record.

“When the Secretary of State did its audit, there was a lot, I think a fair bit of looking at the machines,” says the Trump official. “The audit came in pretty darn close to what the machine count was with the receipts. So, I don’t know the outcome of those, but our understanding, again, this is from the Secretary of State’s Office, was that there weren’t any physical issues with machines on those inspections.”

In a 2020 email submitted as evidence in defamation lawsuit against Fox News, network CEO Suzanne Scott was concerned that the Fox’s insistence on fact-checking bogus claims of election fraud was “bad for business.” Dominion has accused the network of maliciously aiding in the spread of false conspiracy theories regarding its role in the 2020 election.

Last month, disclosed messages revealed that prominent Fox hosts and producers privately shared misgivings about former President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud, including Tucker Carlson who called the former president a “demonic force.“

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