Jeanine Pirro, then a weekend host on Fox News, told the chairman of the Republican National Committee in a September 2020 text message that she was determined to aid President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, despite the network prohibiting on-air personalities from political involvement. Via the Washington Post:
“I work so hard for the party across the country,” Pirro, now the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told Ronna McDaniel in the message, according to newly unredacted court documents made public Tuesday in filings by the voting technology company Smartmatic, which in 2021 filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox over its 2020 election coverage. “I’m the Number 1 watched show on all news cable all weekend. I work so hard for the President and party.”
Smartmatic compiled previously unreported text messages and emails between Fox employees, along with comments made in sworn depositions, in an effort to persuade the judge in the long-running case to rule in its favor. Smartmatic’s motion was originally filed in late April, but a judicial hearing officer decided only recently that many of the redactions obscuring parts of the original filings should be removed.
Smartmatic is arguing that hosts and executives at Fox knew claims that the voting technology company had rigged the election in Joe Biden’s favor were false, but allowed them to air to maintain the network’s support with pro-Trump viewers.
Fox News, which filed its own motion for summary judgment, has denied that it defamed Smartmatic and said its hosts were merely covering, without endorsing, newsworthy claims of election fraud made by the president’s associates.
Smartmatic included similar conversations in 468 pages of filings to bolster its contention that Pirro and other Fox hosts were determined to stay on Trump’s good side for a variety of motives.
