Rupert Murdoch, Fox News Hosts Saw Donald Trump’s Election Fraud Claims As “Crazy” And “B.S.,” Dominion Says In Defamation Filing; Network Calls Lawsuit “An Assault On First Amendment”

Fox News executives and hosts including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham did not believe Donald Trump’s election fraud claims in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, but the network nevertheless amplified the conspiracy theories as it worried about losing viewers to Newsmax, according to filings from Dominion Voting Systems made public Thursday.

In its motion for summary judgment in its $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox, with a redacted version made public Thursday (read it here), Dominion makes heavy use of text messages and emails from the Fox personalities and staff to contend that the network was well aware that claims made by guests such as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani were bogus.

More from Deadline

• Appeals Court Declines To Dismiss Smartmatic Lawsuit Against Fox News

• FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn Again Faces Senate Committee As Biden Administration Tries To Break Agency Deadlock

• Nikki Haley To Rival Donald Trump In Bid For Republican Presidency Nomination

“Really crazy stuff,” Rupert Murdoch wrote in a November 19 text about Giuliani, according to the filing.

Dominion’s lawsuit is over claims, made on air by Powell, Giuliani and others, and then advanced by Fox News figures like Lou Dobbs, that it was involved in rigging the results of the 2020 election. Dominion contends that many at the network knew the claims were false, but executives and hosts worried of losing Trump-supporting viewers if Fox News called them out as unfounded. In one instance, Carlson called for one reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, to get fired for tweeting out a fact check of the vote-rigging claims.

In its filing, Dominion’s attorneys wrote: “Fox knew the truth. It knew the allegations against Dominion were ‘outlandish’ and ‘crazy’ and ‘ludicrous’ and ‘nuts.’ Yet it used the power and influence of its platform to promote that false story. Fox knew better.”

With its own motion for summary judgment (read it here and here) also made public, Fox said in a statement that Dominion is taking an “extreme and unsupported view of defamation law and rests on an accounting of the facts that has no basis in the record.” Fox also said that Dominion has “cherry picked quotes stripped of key context” and focused on facts that are irrelevant to defamation law.

“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox said in a statement.

In its motion, Fox’s attorneys argue that Dominion’s lawsuit is an “assault on the First Amendment.” They said that the network was covering something “as newsworthy as it gets”: the attempt by a sitting president to challenge the election results.

“As the story unfolded, and Dominion denied many of the allegations, Fox News covered those denials too, including by reporting Dominion’s position, giving Dominion the opportunity to tell its side and soliciting the views of disinterested third parties on the allegations and their likelihood of making a difference in election outcomes, sometimes in a debate-like format,” Fox’s attorneys wrote.

Fox also filed an amended counterclaim Thursday (read it here) that challenges the damages claim. In the counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that Dominion investor Staple Street Capital bought a controlling interest in Dominion at a “small fraction” of the amount being sought in the lawsuit. They wrote that “even under the most optimistic projections, Staple Street has never estimated Dominion’s value as a business to be anywhere near $1.6 billion.”

The trial is scheduled to start in April in Delaware Superior Court, but the public release of the motions gives a glimpse of both sides’ cases and of what has been turned up in discovery. Murdoch, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and a number of personalities have sat for depositions.

According to the filing, when Murdoch watched Giuliani and Powell at a post-election press conference on November 19, he told Scott, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.” Scott replied, “yes Sean and even Pirro agrees.” The latter was a reference to Jeanine Pirro, another Fox News host and stalwart defender of Trump.

“Instead of calling out the truth, however, Fox continued to ‘damage everybody’ — not only continuing to invite those guests onto its shows but endorsing those lies,” Dominion’s attorneys wrote. “Fox duped its audience.”

Dominion’s filing highlights messages sent between Fox News personalities and executives in which they worried about losing audience to Newsmax in the aftermath of the 2020 election. It was triggered by Fox News’ call of Arizona for Joe Biden on Election Night, angering the Trump White House but giving the first sign that the president would lose the election.

Instead, through a series of retweets, Trump promoted Newsmax or One America News Network, two much smaller rivals to Fox, with a number of personalities who quickly embraced the president’s vote-rigging claims.

According to the Dominion filing, in one exchange with his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, Carlson wrote, on November 5: “We worked really hard to build what we have. Those f—ers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.” He said that he had spoken with Hannity and Ingraham and they were “highly upset.” “At this point we’re getting hurt no matter what.”

“It’s a hard needle to thread, but I really think many on ‘our side’ are being reckless demagogues right now,” Pfeiffer wrote.

Carlson replied, “Of course they are. We’re not going to follow them.” He then added, “What [Trump is] good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”

According to the filing, Fox News host Dana Perino characterized the election fraud and vote-rigging claims as “total bs,” “insane” and “nonsense.” Anchor and chief political correspondent Bret Baier also was among those who doubted the fraud allegations, stating privately on November 5, two days after the election, “There is NO evidence of fraud. None.”

When Maria Bartiromo, another Fox host, posted allegations of a vote dump on social media, Baier alerted Bill Sammon, then senior vice president and managing editor in Washington. “We have to prevent this stuff. … We need to fact check.”

The next day, Murdoch told Scott, “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere.” He added that if Trump “becomes a sore loser we should watch Sean and especially and others don’t sound the same.” According to Dominion’s filing, Scott forwarded that email to Meade Cooper, the executive in charge of primetime programming, including the star opinion hosts.

According to Dominion, Cooper testified that as of November 6, “going on television to say that the election is being stolen” “would not be based in fact at that point.” On November 7, the day that Fox News and other networks called the race for Biden, Cooper and executive David Clark canceled Pirro’s show. “Her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will just be token…” Another Fox producer, Justin Wells, said: “They took her off cuz she was being crazy. Optics are bad. But she is crazy.”

But the viewer backlash “only became worse,” Dominion’s attorneys wrote. “Getting creamed by CNN! Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it,” Murdoch wrote to Scott about the November 7 call. Irena Briganti, the network’s communications chief, wrote that evening, “Our viewers left this week after AZ.”

In the days that followed, some of the Fox hosts worried even that the fact-checking on the news side of the network would turn off more viewers. When Heinrich tweeted a response to one of Trump’s claims about Dominion, pointing out that there was “no evidence” of deleted or lost votes, Carlson and Hannity were irate.

According to the Dominion filing, Carlson wrote to Hannity in a group text thread, “Please get her fired. Seriously.. what the f—? I’m actually shocked….It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Carlson added, “I just went crazy on Meade over it.”

Hannity said that he “already sent to Suzanne with a really?”

Hannity then added, “I’m 3 strikes. Wallace shit debate[.] Election night a disaster[.] Now this BS? Nope. Not gonna fly. Did I mention Cavuto.” Hannity was referencing Chris Wallace, then still with Fox, who moderated the first presidential debate that year, and anchor Neil Cavuto, who was more cautious about telecasting election fraud claims.

Scott, according to the filing, got the message and told Wallace and Briganti, “Sean texted me — he’s standing down on responding but not happy about this and doesn’t understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone in news. She [Heinrich] has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.” Heinrich deleted the fact-checking tweet.

There also was a concern among Fox executives and hosts over Cavuto, according to the filing. The Fox News anchor had cut away from a press conference given by Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, as she made election fraud allegations.

“She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and illegal voting, unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this,” Cavuto told viewers. According to the Dominion filing, the Fox Corp. brand team, led by Raj Shah, Trump’s former deputy press secretary, warned top leadership at the network and parent company “of the ‘brand threat’ posed by Cavuto’s action.”

Executives sounded the alarm about a “Newsmax surge,” according to Dominion, while Jay Wallace, president of Fox News Media, wrote that its rival was “truly an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored.” “Trying to get everyone to comprehend we are on war footing,” he wrote. Hannity warned Carlson and Ingraham on November 12, “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.” Carlson responded, “It’s vandalism.”

Dominion also cited Bartiromo’s November 8 interview with Powell, in which she advanced claims that Dominion software had an algorithm to steal the election. But Bartiromo acknowledged that the source of Powell’s claim — a conspiracy laden email she had received — was “nonsense.” But Bartiromo and Dobbs never reported on the existence of the email, Dominion’s attorneys noted.

“While the claims were laughable on their face, Bartiromo gave them credibility,” Dominion’s attorneys wrote.

Dominion plans to seek to lift the redactions in its summary judgment filing, according to a source.

Fox also said in a statement that Dominion refused to allow it to make its response to their motion for summary judgment public. “The reason for Dominion’s refusal will be clear when the public response is finally released on February 27,” the network said.

It’ll be up to Judge Eric Davis to rule on either side’s summary judgment motions, which are typically filed by parties in litigation as a way to secure a court victory in lieu of a trial.

Best of Deadline

• Oscars: Every Best Supporting Actress Winner Back To 1937

• 50 Classic Valentine's Movies Gallery: From 'Amelie' And 'In The Mood For Love' To 'Paris,Texas' And 'Breathless'

• BAFTA Best Film Award Winners Since 1990 - A Photo Gallery

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.