CNN chief legal analyst Elie Honig said Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s testimony in a defamation case against his network may have knee-capped its best defense.
Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion over claims its hosts made after the 2020 election. Then-President Donald Trump, who had just lost that contest, falsely alleged the election had been rigged against him. Some of the network’s hosts indulged Trump’s lies, some of which involved very specific claims about Dominion engaging in voter fraud.
Murdoch’s testimony echoed communications included in a Dominion filing two weeks ago where it was revealed several Fox News hosts and other employees privately acknowledged Trump’s claims were false. Nonetheless, the network persisted in pushing those claims on the air.
Fox News denies wrongdoing in the case.
“Every day that it’s on the air and continues to push some of the basis of what this defamation lawsuit’s about, they do have legal liability and exposure,” said Laura Coates on Wednesday’s The Situation Room on CNN.
“To Laura’s point,” Honig added. “Rupert Murdoch’s testimony really guts what I think is the best potential defense here for Fox. Their defense – they’ve articulated this – is going to be, ‘These were newsworthy comments by the then-president and his top advisers. We were simply reporting them.’ Now, Murdoch has admitted ‘we’ endorsed them, but he tried to draw this distinction between, ‘Well, not we, Fox, but we, our top anchors.’ But who is Fox News, who is any media corporation if not the voices of the top journalists and reporters?”
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