Looks like Fox employees are telling the truth about the election fraud charges they peddled furiously on their television shows -- and that's bad news for the company. Via the New York Times:
Did Mr. Hannity believe any of this?
“I did not believe it for one second.”
That was the answer Mr. Hannity gave, under oath, in a deposition in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, according to information disclosed in a court hearing on Wednesday. The hearing was called to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial, which the judge has scheduled to begin in April.
Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.
Dominion has to get a jury to agree that people at Fox were saying one thing in private while telling their audience the opposite. And that requires showing a jury convincing evidence that speaks to the state of mind of those making decisions at the network.
Dominion’s lawyers say they have ample evidence to make that case. For instance:
Another previously unknown detail emerged on Wednesday about what was going on inside the Fox universe in those frantic weeks after the election. A second lawyer representing Dominion, Justin Nelson, told Judge Davis about evidence obtained by Dominion showing that an employee of the Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, had tried to intervene with the White House to stop Ms. Powell. According to Mr. Nelson, that employee called the fraud claims “outlandish” and pressed Mr. Trump’s staff to get rid of Ms. Powell, who was advising the president on filing legal challenges to the results.
Dominion's lawyers contend that the Fox Corporation, controlled by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, was also liable for defamation. The judge hearing the case ruled in June that Dominion could sue the lcorporation, which includes the Fox network on basic television and a lucrative sports broadcasting division.
Dare we hope?
