Fox News goes to trial over Smartmatic election fraud allegations: NPR

Fox News appears to be headed to court again over lies about election fraud it broadcast about the 2020 presidential election. This time, the issue revolves around false claims by election technology company Smartmatic that it sabotaged then-President Donald Trump’s re-election bid.

In April 2023, on the eve of a trial in Delaware where Fox founder Rupert Murdoch was scheduled to testify, the network and its parent company announced a $700 million settlement in a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. They agreed to pay $87.5 million.

Internal communications were damning due to numerous revelations from the pre-trial discovery process. The judge found that network officials, from young producers to prime-time hosts to network executives to Mr. Murdoch and his son Lachlan, knew that Joe Biden had won the election fairly. But in order to win back President Trump’s viewers, they allowed their guests to spread the lie that President Trump was cheated out of winning. Some organizers expanded on and even accepted this claim.

Now, a New York state appellate court ruling has allowed Smartmatic’s parallel $2.7 billion lawsuit to proceed. The ruling also dismissed some charges against the station’s parent company, Fox.

Pro-Trump Fox hosts, including Maria Bartiromo and the late Lou Dobbs, have invited guests on air to make wild, unsubstantiated claims about Smartmatic, and sometimes endorsed those claims themselves. It looked like.

Amid the outcry, FOX News and FOX Business Network aired an awkward segment with voting technology expert Edward Perez, presenting viewers with rebuttals to these outlandish claims. Newsmax, a right-wing channel that competes with Fox for Trump-supporting viewers, did much the same.

Just one day after Smartmatic filed the lawsuit in February 2021, Fox forced Dobbs off the air.

Eric Connolly, Smartmatic’s lead attorney, said in a statement: “The New York Supreme Court today ruled against Fox in its latest attempt to escape responsibility for the defamation campaign it orchestrated against Smartmatic after the 2020 election. was rejected,” he said. “Fox has failed in its efforts to have this lawsuit dismissed and will now have to answer for its actions in court. They are seeking billions in damages. We look forward to presenting evidence at trial. ”

Unlike Dominion, whose voting machines were used in 20 states, Smartmatic says its technology was only used in Los Angeles County in 2020. Fox has sharply questioned Smartmatic’s value, saying the contract was at risk and lost.

“We stand ready to defend this lawsuit, which revolves around highly newsworthy events, if it goes to trial,” a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement. “As the report prepared by our financial experts shows, Smartmatic’s claims for damages are implausible, divorced from reality, and ostensibly a violation of First Amendment freedoms. It is intended to cool the

In the Dominion case, Fox also faced allegations that its programs and hosts were simply relaying inherently newsworthy claims from people who were inherently newsworthy, namely the then-president and his allies. I also asked. Delaware Chief Judge Eric M. Davis rejected that argument. He found that Fox executives, stars and programs aired false claims thereby defaming Dominion.

Fox said Davis applied New York defamation law in the Delaware case, but the New York case provides a new venue with slightly different implications.

Fox, like many other cases, settled with Dominion before it could begin trial arguments. The company says it intends to fight the claims made by Smartmatic in court.