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dominion voting systems
Trump Officials Pushed Plan to Ban Half of US Voting Machines in Unprecedented Election Meddling Bid
The voting machines ban was part of a broader effort aimed at letting the federal government "take control over elections from US states," reported Reuters.
May 22, 2026
A group of Trump administration officials last year pushed a plan to ban half of voting machines currently used in the US based on disproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen by former President Joe Biden.
According to a Friday report from Reuters, Trump adviser Kurt Olsen asked the US Department of Commerce to declare components of machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems to be national security risks.
Reuters' sources said that Olsen's idea came as part of a brainstorming session "about how the federal government could take control over elections from US states, an idea publicly aired by Trump."
Some officials at the Commerce Department began exploring legal justifications that could be used to ban half of all voting machines, but the effort ended because "Olsen and other administration staffers working with him failed to provide evidence to justify such a move," Reuters reported.
In place of the Dominion voting machines, Olsen pushed a scheme to force all affected states to hand count ballots, a process that some election experts say would be both more time consuming and prone to error.
Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science professor, told Reuters that "changing to hand counting would be chaotic,” adding that "it might facilitate cheating.”
Olsen, a former Trump campaign lawyer who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was hired by the White House last year to investigate that very same election, which Trump lost to Biden by 4.5 percentage points in the popular vote and by 74 votes in the US electoral college.
The report on the election machine-banning effort comes as Trump has pushed an unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering scheme, which has resulted in an electoral map that elections analyst G. Elliot Morris projects could result in Republicans maintaining control of the US House of Representatives while losing the nationwide popular vote by three points.
Democrats have accused the president of pushing to rig the 2026 midterm elections.
The president also issued an executive order that places new restrictions on mail-in voting, which the president has falsely claimed was used by Democrats to steal the 2020 election from him.
Additionally, Trump and allies such as right-wing podcaster Steve Bannin have suggested deploying federal immigration agents to polling places in November, a move that critics contend would be an unprecedented and unconstitutional federal voter intimidation campaign.
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'Big Trouble for Trump' as Big Lie Lawyer Sidney Powell Pleads Guilty in Georgia Election Case
One reporter said the plea shows the prosecution is "working... up the proverbial food chain when it comes to flipping lower-level defendants and trying to get to the king at the top."
Oct 19, 2023
Disgraced attorney Sidney Powell—a key legal architect of former U.S. President Donald Trump's effort to rig the 2020 presidential contest—pleaded guilty Thursday to reduced charges in the Georgia election interference case, a move that came just one day before jury selection in her trial would have started.
Powell, Trump, and 17 others were charged in August by Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis with violations of Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act for allegedly participating in a sprawling "criminal enterprise" aimed at overturning the 2020 presidential election results in the state.
Trump faces 13 criminal charges in the case, one of four state and federal cases in which the 2024 GOP presidential front-runner is charged with a combined 91 counts.
According to The Associated Press, Powell, who is 68 years old, will serve six years of probation, pay a $6,000 fine, and write an apology letter to the state and people of Georgia. Critically, she must also testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.
Powell is the second defendant in the Georgia case to take a plea deal. Last month, bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.
Jury selection in the trial of Powell co-defendant Kenneth Cheseboro, who is allegedly behind the Trump fake electors plot, is set to start Friday.
Powell, a prolific purveyor of Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats, claimed that Dominion Voting Systems was part of a plot to rig its voting machines to switch large numbers of votes from Trump to President Joe Biden.
In December 2020, Powell, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne allegedly presented a draft executive order to Trump involving the seizure of voting machines by armed private contractors. She was also accused of involvement in arranging the illegal collection of data from election systems and voting machines at the Coffee County, Georgia elections office in January 2021.
Powell also associated herself with the QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibal pedophiles including Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Tom Hanks are involved in an international child sex-trafficking ring.
Once described by Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis as part of an "elite strike force" working to prove the former president's stolen election claim, Powell was later sidelined after peddling baseless claims of vote hacking involving Venezuela, Cuba, and "communist money."
"She was too crazy even for the president," one unnamed Trump official told The Washington Post in November 2020.
Reacting to Powell's plea deal, MSNBC's Katie Phang said that "it is the communications between her and Donald Trump that are really kind of working your way up the proverbial food chain when it comes to flipping lower-level defendants and trying to get to the king at the top."
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NYC Pension Funds and State of Oregon Sue Fox Over Election Lies
"Defendants chose to invite robust defamation claims, with potentially huge financial liability and potentially larger business repercussions, rather than disappoint viewers of Fox News," the lawsuit reads in part.
Sep 13, 2023
The state of Oregon and New York City's pension funds filed a lawsuit against Fox Corporation Tuesday, arguing that the company allowed its Fox News channel to air falsehoods surrounding the 2020 election that put shareholders' investments at risk.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery, is the most important shareholder action against the company since it settled a defamation suit for a record $787.5 million with Dominion Voting Systems in April. It also comes as experts had long warned the corporation it was leaving itself vulnerable to exactly these kinds of lawsuits by spreading lies that could lead to defamation claims, CNN reported.
"The board of Fox Corporation took a massive risk in pursuing profits by perpetuating and peddling known falsehoods," Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in a statement. "The directors' choices exposed themselves and the company to liability and exposed their shareholders to significant risks. That is the crux of our lawsuit, and we look forward to making our case in court."
"Fox's board of directors has blatantly disregarded the need for journalistic standards and failed to put safeguards in place despite having a business model that invites defamation litigation."
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, both guests and hosts on Fox News repeated the false claim that former President Donald Trump had truly won the election and circulated conspiracy theories justifying this view, such as the lie that Dominion voting machines had swapped Trump votes to votes for President Joe Biden. The lawsuit argues that by catering to the desires of pro-Trump viewers, it failed in its duty to shareholders.
"Defendants chose to invite robust defamation claims, with potentially huge financial liability and potentially larger business repercussions, rather than disappoint viewers of Fox News," the lawsuit reads in part, according to The Associated Press.
Both New York City's pension funds and the state of Oregon have significant investments in Fox Corporation. The city pension funds had $28.1 million worth of shares at the end of July, while the state of Oregon had shares worth $5.2 million as of August 31, its Department of Justice said.
Neither plaintiff has specified an amount of damages, but New York City Comptroller and pension fund manager Brad Lander told The New York Times the city needed to "make the shareholders whole."
"Fox's board of directors has blatantly disregarded the need for journalistic standards and failed to put safeguards in place despite having a business model that invites defamation litigation," Lander said in a statement reported by CNN. "A lack of journalistic standards and a proper strategy to mitigate defamation has clearly harmed Fox's reputation and threatens their bottom line and long-term profitability."
Fox leadership did not comment to any major outlets on the lawsuit.
In addition to the Dominion suit, Fox has faced several other defamation claims, including an upcoming $2.7 billion lawsuit from election technology company Smartmatic and another from Ray Epps, a man from Arizona at the center of a conspiracy theory alleging he ran an FBI plan to instigate the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Some groups argue that Fox News should face consequences beyond lawsuits. On July 3, the Media and Democracy project filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to not renew the broadcast license for FOX 29 Philadelphia (WTXF-TV).
"As an FCC broadcast licensee FOX is bound to broadcast in the public interest, convenience, and necessity," the petitioners wrote. "Instead, it has repeatedly aired false information about election fraud, sowing discord in the country and contributing to harmful and dangerous acts on January 6, 2021."
Media experts and activists Steve Macek and Mitchell Szczepanczyk argued in a column that appeared at Common Dreams last week that the petition had merit.
"Although stripping an established TV station of its broadcast license may seem like an extreme measure," they said, "the Fox Corporation's record of malfeasance and its repeated betrayal of the public trust justifies the action in this case."
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Democracy Lost: Dominion v. Fox
While Dominion walked away with $787.5 million, Fox preserved a lucrative business model based on telling people the lies they want to hear.
Apr 26, 2023
Both parties to the litigation won.
Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private-equity firm, is in the business of maximizing the return on its clients' investments. In 2018, it bought a 76% interest in Dominion Voting Systems for $38.3 million. Five years later, Fox's $787.5 million payout represented a staggering gain.
Fox News makes money by telling its audience what it wants to hear, even if Fox knows it's a lie. The settlement preserves its lucrative business model.
Democracy lost.
Panic at the Top
In the run-up to the election, Fox enjoyed historic ratings and revenues. But a momentous election night decision put everything at risk. A small sample of Fox's internal communications tells the story–and the public probably hasn't seen the most damning ones.
November 3, 2020, 11:20 pm: Fox became the first network to announce that Joe Biden had won Arizona–a disastrous development for Donald Trump's re-election prospects. The Trump campaign was livid. On behalf of Bill Sammon's Decision Desk team, Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt went on live television, defending the call to skeptical on-air hosts Tucker Carlson and Bret Baier.
Fox soon began hemorrhaging viewers in the far-right audience it had cultivated for decades.
November 11: Raj Shah, Fox Corp.'s senior vice president and Trump's former White House deputy press secretary, warned company leaders that "bold, clear, and decisive action is needed for us to begin to regain the trust that we're losing with our core audience." Two days later, he wrote to Rupert Murdoch's son, Lachlan, that "Fox News is facing a brand crisis" and "open revolt… precipitous decline in Fox's favorability among our core audience… poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon."
In another email, Shah told colleagues that the network's brand was "under heavy fire from our customer base." In yet another, he wrote, "We are not concerned with losing market share to CNN or MSNBC right now. Our concern is Newsmax and One America News Network …."
Lying as a Corporate Strategy
November 12: Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a Trump tweet that referred to Fox's broadcasts. She said that there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion voting machines. In a text chain with Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson wrote, "Please get her fired. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke."
November 13: The "Brain Room"–Fox's fact-checking and research division–concluded that claims about Dominion voting machines were "100% false. Dominion systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state and local election authorities, as well [as] fact-checkers, have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process."
Fox on-air hosts ignored it.
November 16: In a Zoom meeting, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said, "Listen, it's one of the sad realities: If we hadn't called Arizona those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger. The mystery would have been still hanging out there."
Fox could not afford a similar misstep in the upcoming Georgia runoff for control of the U.S. Senate. Scott decided to push out Sammon and Stirewalt.
Elevating Lies and Eliminating Truth-Tellers
November 18: In an email exchange with Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson complained about Trump attorney Sidney Powell, whose on-air election lies had pervaded Fox programs since November 8:
"Sidney Powell is lying by the way," Carlson wrote. "I caught her. It's insane."
"Sidney is a complete nut," Ingraham answered. "No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy."
"Our viewers are good people and they believe it," Carlson said, making clear that he did not.
But Fox hosts did continue working with Powell and Rudy, promoting repeatedly what the judge in the Dominion case later ruled were "CRYSTAL clear" lies.
November 19: Giuliani held his infamous "dripping hair dye" press conference. Internally, Rupert Murdoch called it "Really crazy stuff. And damaging." And he told Suzanne Scott, "Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us too." Likewise, Shah texted that Giuliani sounded "SO F*CKING CRAZY."
But when Fox News White House correspondent, Kristin Fisher, fact-checked Giuliani on-air immediately following the conference, her boss complained:
"He expressed his great unhappiness with my live shot. He emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it. And he told me that I needed to do a better job of respect—this is a quote—'respecting our audience.'" Fisher thought she had respected the audience by telling it truth.
Likewise, Shah recoiled at Fisher's fact-checking: "This is the kinda shit that will kill us. We cover it wall to wall and then we burn that down with all the skepticism."
"What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff."
November 20: Rupert Murdoch emailed Suzanne Scott, "Maybe best to let Bill [Sammon] go right away and make acting appointment. Also the other guy… be a big message with Trump people."
"We were going to do Stirewalt next," Scott responded.
Early December: "This has to stop now," Scott wrote in an email to a network vice-president, referring to anchor Eric Shawn's fact-checking of Trump's bogus voter-fraud claim. "This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business."
December 2: Bill Sammon wrote to Chris Stirewalt: "More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we're still focused solely on supposed election fraud—a month after the election. It's remarkable how weak ratings makes good journalists do bad things. In my 22 years affiliated with Fox, this is the closest thing I've seen to an existential crisis—at least journalistically."
Stirewalt responded: "What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff."
January 2021: Sammon announced his retirement. Fox laid off Stirewalt in what it called a "post-election restructuring."
Protecting Rupert Murdoch
Less than two weeks before trial, the judge in the case ruled that Dominion could force Rupert Murdoch to testify at trial. Dominion planned to call him as its second witness. His internal communications about Giuliani, as well as Sammon and Stirewalt, were devastating.
But there were more:
January 12, 2021: In an email exchange with Fox board member and former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Murdoch said that the January 6 insurrection was a "[w]ake up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers!"
"Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25% of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime."
January 20: Murdoch mused about the impact of Trump's lying: "The more I think about McConnell's remarks or complaint, the more I agree. Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25% of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up January 6th."
January 21: Murdoch sent a message to Suzanne Scott: "Is it 'unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6 an important chance to have the result overturned'? Maybe Sean [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] went too far… All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump … but what did he tell his viewers?"
Fox executives responded with 50 examples of the "high profile Fox voices" that had fed Trump's Big Lie.
Fox's Predicament Worsened
A week after Murdoch was ordered to testify at trial, Fox had a new problem. Its attorneys had repeatedly misrepresented his status. They had told the court that he was not an officer of Fox News when, in fact, he was its executive chairman. The judge said that he would sanction Fox News and launch an investigation into what other material it had failed to disclose.
Now Fox's lawyers had skin in the game too.
What had Fox withheld? We'll never know. But during Dominion's opening statement to the jury, it planned to present additional internal Fox communications publicly for the first time.
Dominion Won Too
As discovery in Dominion's defamation case against Fox proceeded, its claims became surprisingly strong, but significant obstacles to any recovery remained. Juries can produce unexpected results; damages are always a question mark; appeals can drag on for years. Declining a certain $787.5 million would have been like trading a winning Powerball ticket worth the sixth largest jackpot in history for a future one that might be worthless.
Democracy Lost
Dominion's attorney suggested that the settlement benefited the public: "Trust matters. Lies have consequences… Today's settlement of $787.5 million represents vindication and accountability."
Then Fox issued a public statement that proved him wrong. It sounded like doublespeak from George Orwell's 1984: "This settlement reflects Fox's continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards."
The only lesson Fox learned is that when it knowingly pushes lies, their employees shouldn't create an electronic trail proving it. The settlement is just another cost of doing business–less than 20% of Fox Corp.'s cash on hand and less than half of its net income for 2022. And it's tax-deductible! Fox plans a massive increase in cable and satellite provider fees that will more than offset the payment.
In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government."
Fox's business model is antithetical to Jefferson's vision. It makes billions by challenging the nation with an existential question:
Can democracy die from too many lies?
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Has Fox News 'Found Religion' by Firing Tucker Carlson?
If Fox News has seen any kind of light in jettisoning its most hateful voice, it’s the light of the almighty dollar.
Apr 25, 2023
Tucker Carlson got fired!
Many liberals are celebrating, calling it a reckoning—a win for racial justice and decency. With this bombshell revelation, some might even believe that Fox News has finally gotten religion and seen the error of its ways. It's better late than never, they say. Salvation is always possible.
But if Fox did find religion, why did it take so long? Religion is not something that is found overnight. It is a conversion that moves us when it takes hold at the core of our being. It's hard to believe that Fox has suddenly seen the light and come to the conclusion that the blatant racism, hatred, and xenophobia that the network has trafficked in for so long is not something they want to continue. Does Fox News want us to believe that it has seen the light and knelt at the altar of repentance because it finally jettisoned the leading and most incendiary voice of racial hatred?
Why now?
True religion requires clear directional change. Repentance requires amends.
Why has the network at this moment felt a need to jettison Tucker Carlson from his throne? Fox had no problem previously with the racism, xenophobia, replacement theories, conspiracy theories, and the blatantly white supremacist tropes spewing from his mouth each evening. The network not only did not have a problem with Carlson's lies, half-truths, and propagandist rhetoric, it benefited enormously and from what was the cornerstone of ratings and advertising dollars. If Fox suddenly found religion, it was a different religion than the voice Paul heard on the road to Damascus that caused a radical change of heart. It was a different religion than the bright light of revelation from heaven that makes one turn away from one's complacency and complicity—from slavery, Jim Crow, unabashed and unchecked capitalism, and patriarchy.
At best, the kind of religion Fox found was the $787.5 million judgment agreement kind of spirit. It was not the fear of fire and brimstone and souls burning in hell. It was not the inability to live in one's own skin and sleep at night while doing nothing to stop the extrajudicial execution of Black and Brown in their own homes and neighborhoods or to stop refugee children from being separated from their parents and held in concentration camps at the U.S.-Mexico border. At best, the payout of nearly $1 billion to Dominion Voting Systems, and the other legal threats looming, is Fox's interpretation of dangling over the fires of hell.
If Fox has seen the light, even just the light of financial salvation, then it will purge itself not just of Carlson, but of all of the minions of hell that continue to pollute its airwaves with the filth of hatred, racism, and white supremacy. Why fire Carlson but continue to offer airtime to white supremacist ideologues like Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo, who have each engaged in the same distortions that Carlson is guilty of? Why exchange one divisive and hateful personality for another? True religion requires clear directional change. Repentance requires amends.
Can you imagine if it had been a Black or Brown person on the air spewing anti-white rhetoric, embracing hate-filled divisive ideologies, and fanning historical flames of the country's tendencies towards violence? How long will they be allowed on the air?
The very same day that Fox ousted Carson, CNN fired Don Lemon. Was the exact same day timing of the firings—weeks after Lemon said that Nikki Haley was "not in her prime" and CNN sent him to sensitivity training—a coincidence? Perhaps it was a joint sacrifice to the Gods of ratings, the almighty God of the dollar by networks who claim to be arch-enemies but are part of the same system.
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Tucker Carlson, 'Purveyor of Hate,' Out at Fox
"Fox News without Tucker is basically a wet paper towel: fragile and functionally useless," said one media expert. "They will try and get their footing back fast, but don't let them."
Apr 24, 2023
Less than a week after avoiding a trial regarding its election lies with a $787.5 million settlement, Fox News announced on Monday that its top-rated prime-time host, Tucker Carlson, is leaving the network effective immediately.
Carlson's final show was Friday evening, and he closed the broadcast by telling viewers, "We'll be back on Monday," suggesting he wasn't aware of his imminent departure.
"Tucker Carlson Tonight" played a key role in the defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, which accused the network of spreading misinformation about its election software as its hosts and guests repeatedly claimed votes cast for former Republican President Donald Trump in 2020 had been "flipped" for Democratic President Joe Biden.
Carlson had been expected to testify in the case before it was settled just before the trial was scheduled to begin last month. While claiming on-air that questions about the validity of the 2020 election results were part of "legitimate discourse and inquiry," uncovered text messages between Carlson and his producer showed that he found Trump's claims about the election "disgusting" and "destructive."
In addition to promoting lies about Biden's victory, Carlson spent his 14-year tenure at Fox News—as a contributor, panelist, co-host, and starting in 2016 as host of his own prime-time show—attacking immigrants and asylum-seekers, advancing the white supremacist "Great Replacement Theory," and urging police to crack down on racial justice protesters.
Economist Robert Reich noted that Carlson's exit does not mean that the network will "start telling the truth."
While Fox News has given no indication that its other hosts, commentators, and guests will stop promoting similar ideas, consumer rights watchdog Public Citizen President Robert Weissman called Carlson's departure "flat-out great news."
"Anything that reduces the reach of this purveyor [of] hate, racism, reaction and authoritarianism is a positive step for America and the world," he said.
With Carlson gone, said U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Fox News officials "just need to take out the rest of the trash."
Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters for America, said Carlson was likely pushed out because he had become "toxic" for the network, even as it relied heavily on him and his millions of viewers.
"Fox News without Tucker is basically a wet paper towel: fragile and functionally useless," said Carusone. "They will try and get their footing back fast, but don't let them."
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Hush Money: Fox's Dominion
The right-wing media giant pays once again to prevent a trial, with more to come .
Apr 23, 2023
Admittedly, Fox’s settlement with Dominion Voting Systems has benefits as well as drawbacks in establishing accountability for ill-motivated journalism. Yes, it’s the largest-ever payout to settle a media defamation lawsuit, and yes, it will help the subsequent libel claims against Fox for amplifying and validating the Big Lie. Most importantly, the discovery phase of the lawsuit was not muzzled (put under seal), so it is a matter of public record that Fox knew it was lying to its viewers regarding rigged voting machines flipping votes to Biden, and more. Still, the payout will not deter Fox from continuing its venomous, reckless and profitable practices, leaving us misinformed and divided.
Defamation is an intentional tort and punitive damages are available. Here actual malice (knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of truth) is easily shown: beyond the damning emails, there is audio of a Trump official talking with a Fox Producer acknowledging that there was no evidence of fraud (see Amy Goodman interview with Angelo Carusone, democracy now.org, April 21, 2023); thus obliterating Fox’s defense of neutral reporting, showing that Fox was actually in cahoots with team Rump in spreading known lies. Punitive damages are aimed at deterring egregious conduct. In the final quarter of 2022 Fox reported earnings of $4.61 billion. It sure seems like Fox got off cheap.
Rupert Murdoch is a ruthless media mogul who has always used his money and blackmail tactics to lord over people
$787.5 million is the biggest ever payout in a media libel case but it will not deter Fox—which, in an effort to calm the markets, announced right after the settlement that it will get a more than $200 million tax break from the payout (business expense) and that it is asking for a $1 increase per cable subscriber, which will yield them some $980 million more in profit.
Rupert Murdoch is a ruthless media mogul who has always used his money and blackmail tactics to lord over people (see PBS Frontline 2012 documentary "Murdoch’s Scandal"). He has paid before, agreeing to pay: more than $900 million to settle fraud and antitrust lawsuits; hundreds of millions to settle the British massive phone and email hacking scandal; and, more than $200 million to prevent allegations of widespread sexual harassment at Fox from being heard in court. He paid $1.7 billion to settle his 1999 divorce from his second wife.
Libel lawsuits related to the Big Lie are just getting started. Dominion is bringing defamation claims against other news networks and against Big Lie enablers including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and My Pillow CEO Michael Lindell. Once again, wherever the disgraced former President goes, misery, disgrace, and litigation follow.
Fox faces a $ 2.7 billion defamation claim from Smartmatic, another election tech company; it is also facing shareholder derivative lawsuits for violating its fiduciary duty. The pretrial rulings, discovery and payout in Dominion v. Fox will hurt its defense in the Smartmatic case but Fox viewers won’t hear a thing in this respect, remaining in their Foxhole/bubble.
Once again, wherever the disgraced former President goes, misery, disgrace, and litigation follow.
Critics have asked: why didn’t Dominion demand an acknowledgment of wrongdoing and an apology from Fox? Because they were paid not to. This exposes why private lawsuits can’t bring down Fox. In private lawsuits money speaks louder than acknowledgements or apologies. But society needs more. The lies about Dominion were the foundation for the Big Lie, which was the basis for the January 6 riot. Of course, the FCC should be protecting the public from media abuses, but that isn’t in the cards. The fox is guarding the henhouse, once again.
Fox and Trump enabled each other in an echo chamber of lies and divisive greed. Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said sunlight is the best disinfectant, only transparency can root out corruption and enable accountability. This seems sadly antiquated in an era when NDA’s (non-disclosure agreements) are used to enforce ‘voluntary’ silence. Under contract. Take the money and keep quiet. No trial, no record, no precedent.
Murdoch’s Fox has paid before and will keep paying to keep damning evidence under wraps and to keep its profits soaring. Expect the record payout in the Dominion case to be broken in the Smartmatic case. But of course those living in such a divided society pay the heaviest price for Fox’s business practices.
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Fox's Settlement With Dominion Shows That 'Lies Have Consequences'
The largest known media company defamation settlement in U.S. history proves that press freedom isn't incompaitable with accountability.
Apr 21, 2023
When was the last time you forked over nearly $800 million?
Really think. There must have been some moment, some dispute where you decided to reach deep within your checking account to find the better part of a billion dollars—a dispute where you weren't wrong, but you wanted to end things the easy way.
Well, Fox News knows the feeling. While the United States braced to watch a sure-to-be-fascinating defamation trial between Rupert Murdoch's prized cable news channel and Dominion Voting Systems—which alleged that Fox had repeatedly aired false claims that it fixed the 2020 presidential race for Joe Biden—the two parties reached a settlement. The $787.5 million is about half of the $1.6 billion the election technology company demanded.
"Fox News' $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history involving a media company."
Nevertheless, as CNN (4/18/23) reported, "Fox News' $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history involving a media company." It amounts to 5.5% of total revenue of the Fox Corporation, Fox News' parent company, for all of 2022.
It's still less than what Alex Jones of Infowars was forced to pay after a court found that he had repeatedly defamed the parents of the Sandy Hook shooting victims for faking the massacre (Independent, 9/15/22; AP, 10/12/22). And this wasn't Dominion's first settlement regarding false election claims: Newsmax, a network that's sort of like Fox News on crystal meth, settled a similar lawsuit with Dominion two years ago (Business Insider, 4/20/21).
Fox's critics are disappointed; the network gets to keep its dirty laundry out of the light, and it still retains its place as the go-to right-wing cable news source (Atlantic, 4/19/23). On the other hand, Dominion attorney Justin Nelson (Deadline, 4/18/23) told reporters: "The truth matters. Lies have consequences," and that the settlement "represents vindication and accountability."
Tough legal road
On the face of it, Fox had one big thing on its side going into the trial. The 1964 Supreme Court decision New York Times v. Sullivan holds that a plaintiff who's a public figure must show "actual malice" in order to prove libel, which means the defendant must have known that the defamatory statement was false, or else showed "reckless disregard for the truth." This is a tough standard to meet in court, and one that we've defended at FAIR (3/26/21, 2/25/22, 3/1/23, 3/10/23) against conservative calls to overturn the decision.
But it does not seem to have been too tough for Dominion to meet. It appears that the Fox lawyers, taking a look at the jury, smelling the wooden air of the courtroom, and looking at all the discovery documents showing that Fox hosts knew what they were airing was bunk, said to themselves, "We're not going to win this one."
They had good reason to be nervous. At the beginning of the trial, the network apologized to Judge Eric Davis, who is overseeing the case, after he said the network "made misrepresentations to the court and delayed turning over evidence" (ABC, 4/15/23). Fox News host Howard Kurtz tweeted (4/16/23): "Judge knocks down some of [Fox's] key defenses, sanctions the network and suggests an investigation."
Observers forecast a tough legal road for Fox. The New York Times (4/6/23) said that "a number of well-regarded First Amendment lawyers have called the Dominion case among the strongest they have ever seen," because
the documents produced in discovery go far in establishing that people on virtually every level of the company knew that the allegations about Dominion were wrong yet for weeks did nothing to cut them off.
LA Times legal affairs columnist Harry Litman (2/21/23) wrote that Dominion's case was "unusually strong." "Defamation suits often concern the work of careless or sensationalist reporters slipping past fact-checking safeguards," he noted. However, the allegations in this case had threatened to "lay bare a deliberate corporate decision to ignore the truth and publish lies."
At Bloomberg (3/18/23), Noah Feldman balanced the necessity of protecting press freedom and holding press outlets accountable, saying that courts should strive to "preserve the core idea behind the law of libel: that no one, not even the media speaking about a public figure on a newsworthy topic, may knowingly repeat defamatory lies as statements of fact." Feldman added that if
we abandon that basic idea, we will launch public discourse into a fully fact-free zone. Donald Trump has already done his best to put us there. The courts and the Constitution should not give him an after-the-fact victory.
In-house cheering squad
And yet Murdoch's empire, as well as some other conservative journalists, had spoken publicly in the network's defense, seemingly convinced of Fox's blamelessness. William Barr, former attorney general under George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump, assured readers of the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal (3/23/23) that the case against Fox, before the trial, was weak, because "it isn't defamatory for journalists to report on newsworthy allegations made by others, even when those allegations turn out to be false." (In fact, reporters who repeat defamatory falsehoods are often committing libel, though there are exceptions to this general rule—Volokh Conspiracy, 11/7/18.)
Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple noted that Fox even publicly scoffed at the lawsuit last year in its annual report (Twitter, 4/19/23).
The idea that it's been proven that Fox aired false accusations "is virtually gospel among American liberals," complained Glenn Greenwald (System Update, 3/3/23), a frequent guest on Fox's Tucker Carlson Tonight. "As usual, these corporate media outlets"—as though Fox were somehow not corporate, or not a media outlet—"along with Democratic Party leaders, are marching in total lockstep, and none has aired any skepticism or questioning of this accusatory framework."
The Murdoch-owned New York Post editorial board (4/17/23) pulled an "I know you are but what am I?" routine in regards to the Dominion case, saying that the New York Times ran "endless Russia, Russia, Russia stories" about 2016 election interference (AP, 4/21/20), as well as the 1619 Project (8/14/19), which it called a
Pulitzer-winning disinfo push hawking the factually inaccurate idea that the American Revolution was undertaken primarily to preserve the slaveholding rights of Southern colonies.
There's some difference between allegations of defamation and a controversial interpretation of U.S. history. Who does the Post think should sue the Times for damages over the 1619 Project, the ghost of James Madison?
The Post went on, "How many internal emails from the Times' own newsroom would express private concerns over coverage, even as bogus stories are rushed into print to juice subscription revenues?" That's actually a fair question, especially when you consider the Times' coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq War (FAIR.org, 3/22/23). However, that still doesn't vindicate Fox.
No need to weaken press protection
These defenses seem laughable now that Fox has decided to part with the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Samoa in order to keep its dirty laundry out of the public eye. Interestingly, though, Barr's defense of Fox got one thing right when he said, "Conservatives shouldn't try to weaken the actual-malice standard"—which is something, as mentioned earlier, many conservatives want to do.
In fact, some right-wing outlets are already warning the Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' effort to challenge Sullivan could backfire, because, as the New York Times (4/3/23) put it, it "would affect right-wing reporters and commentators, not just the mainstream outlets that have become punching bags for Republican politicians."
But what Barr, and the other Fox defenders, didn't quite understand is that there can be some measure of accountability for victims of defamation by right-wing rage machines like Fox without sacrificing free press rights. Because this settlement showed just that.
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MAGA Pillow Man Ordered to Pay $5 Million to Expert Who Debunked 2020 Election Lie
"It has not been a good week for election deniers," quipped one political commentator.
Apr 20, 2023
My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a die-hard supporter of former President Donald Trump who offered a $5 million reward to any cybersecurity expert who disproved his conspiracy theory about the 2020 U.S. presidential election, was ordered Wednesday by an arbitration panel to pay up after a Trump voter called his bluff.
Robert Zeidman, a 63-year-old software developer from Nevada, sued Lindell for breach of contract after the CEO refused to make good on a 2021 "Prove Mike Wrong Challenge" to anyone who could debunk his false claim of having data showing Chinese meddling in the last presidential contest.
The publicity stunt did not require participants to disprove election interference. Contestants were only required to show that Lindell's data was unconnected to the 2020 election.
Zeidman told The Washington Post that he was "really happy" with the panel's ruling.
"They clearly saw this as I did—that the data we were given at the symposium was not at all what Mr. Lindell said it was," he said of the arbitrators. "The truth is finally out there."
Zeidman's lawyer, Brian Glasser, told the Post that the panel's decision should be a warning to other purveyors of election lies.
"I think the arbitrators thought it important that these claims be vetted, because they've done great harm to our country," he said.
Lindell slammed the ruling in a text message to the Post: "They made a terribly wrong decision! This will be going to court!"
Lindell is also the target of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which claims the CEO tried to increase My Pillow sales—the company gave discounts to customers using the codes "QAnon" and "FightforTrump"—by peddling Trump's "Big Lie" that Democrats stole the election.
On Tuesday, Fox News reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, a move that averted an imminent jury trial.
"It has not been a good week for election deniers," tweeted political commentator Keith Boykin.
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'Not Surprised, But Disgusted': Fox Avoids Trial by Settling With Dominion for $787.5 Million
"There better be whole bunch of broadcast apologies in this settlement."
Apr 18, 2023
Moments before Fox News was set to face a jury regarding the false claims repeatedly made on air about Dominion Voting Systems and the 2020 election, the right-wing media corporation announced it had reached a settlement with the company.
The settlement amounted to $787.5 million and Dominion CEO John Poulos said in a press conference outside the courtroom in New York that "Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion," but critics said the financial agreement robbed the public of a trial that would have exposed the news network's lies about fraud during the 2020 election and its behind-the-scenes operations.
"The trial would've exposed the underpinnings of a corporation that has spent almost three decades radicalizing middle-age and older white people with lies, fear, hatred, and white supremacy," said Ashtin Pittman of the Mississippi Free Press.
Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox in 2021, challenging repeated baseless claims by guests and hosts of the network that former President Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election and that Dominion's voting machines had changed votes in President Joe Biden's favor. Private messages between hosts and producers at the network have since been exposed, showing many believed the lies to be "reckless" and "absurd" even as Fox continued to spread them.
If Fox truly admitted wrongdoing, said a number of critics, it should be required to do so on-air and not just in a private settlement.
Though the settlement means there will not be a public airing of Fox News' lies about Dominion, Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said the company has still "been completely exposed as a partisan propaganda outlet that is willing to do anything for profit and power."
"The stain this leaves on Fox can't be wiped out with money," he said. "Fox News lied about the 2020 election; they all knew it was a lie, right up to the Murdochs themselves. What the Dominion trial offered was a keyhole view into the day-to-day industrial-scale deceit that takes place at Fox. It helped illustrate why the company is such a uniquely destructive force."
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