By Jeremy Barr, Washington Post– Fox News employees, up and down the corporate ladder, did not believe that the 2020 election was rigged, despite claims that were later broadcast on the network implicating voting technology company Smartmatic in a broader conspiracy to throw the election for Joe Biden, according to newly unsealed documents.
“This case presents unprecedented evidence of actual malice – admissions of disbelief from dozens of individuals across every level of Fox’s organization from the show runners to the Chairman himself,” lawyers for Smartmatic wrote in a filing as part of its $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, citing company co-founder Rupert Murdoch. “No court has ever encountered such a mountain of confessions from those responsible for publishing defamatory statements.”
Hundreds of pages of legal documents – part of lengthy motions for summary judgment that ask a New York judge to decide aspects of the case in their favor – that were initially filed in late April were released Thursday. Their heavy redactions obscured the specific text messages and internal emails on which Smartmatic has based its arguments, pulled from many months of gathering evidence and deposing witnesses.
Still, there were glimpses of the case that Smartmatic is making: namely, that Fox executives and hosts knowingly broadcast false claims about the company in a bid to help win back viewers who had been distressed by the network’s coverage of the election, and in doing so damagedthe voting technology company’s economic prospects.
“The Fox Defendants have acknowledged, at least internally, that they helped spread false claims about the 2020 election being stolen,” lawyers for Smartmatic wrote.
“From the Murdochs to the producers, dozens of Fox personnel knew the Fraud Lie and Other Lies were false. Yet not one person with authority stepped forward to stop the deliberate spread of disinformation. This was not one rogue show. It was a calculated corporate decision to prioritize viewership over accuracy. This was all done with not only apparent disregard for Fox’s standards of business conduct, but also the foreseeable harm to Smartmatic. Those at Fox simply did not care.”
The motions come as the case, which was originally filed in February 2021, slowly winds its way through the New York State Supreme Court system. Depending on how the judge in the case rules on the parties’ motions, a trial in the case would most likely start next year. Fox settled a similar case, filed by Dominion Voting Systems, in April 2023 for $787.5 million.
Smartmatic is asking the judge, David B. Cohen, to rule that the statements made about the company were false, injured its reputation, directly implicated it, and were done with prior knowledge of falsity – or likely falsity. A jury, the company’s lawyers argued, should be tasked only with determining how much money Smartmatic should be owed in compensation.
Among the Fox News hosts mentioned, Smartmatic singled out Jeanine Pirro – the pro-President Donald Trump talker who recently left the network to serve as interim U.S. attorney for D.C. – as someone who benefited from a company “pivot” to a more Trump-friendly approach to covering the election. “Pirro was a golden child after the pivot,” Smartmatic’s lawyers wrote.
Smartmatic also included examples of threatening emails and voicemails that were sent to the company’s executives. “Don’t try to run, accidents happen,” one said. “God sees what you are doing and in the end you will have to answer for your sins,” read another.
In its own filings, Fox News accused Smartmatic of drumming up the lawsuit in a desperate bid to save the company from financial ruin, calling it “a litigation lottery ticket.”
“Eleven million pages of discovery and over one-hundred depositions have shown this lawsuit to be nothing more than ploy to resuscitate an already failing company,” the network’s lawyers wrote, arguing that Smartmatic’s damages estimates are unfounded.
The network has also argued that Smartmatic’s reputation was already tarnished before the television segments at issue aired, lessening any impact they could have had. This week, an appeals court granted Fox the right to obtain additional discovery related to bribery and money laundering charges that were filed last year against three current and former executives from Smartmatic, related to elections in the Philippines. The network viewed the ruling as a major victory, though Smartmatic played down its significance.
Fox made a case to the judge that its hosts – and guests who appeared on their programs – had merely covered newsworthy allegations made by Trump’s legal representatives. The network also argued that its coverage featured a diversity of viewpoints, including some that opposed the president. And when Fox hosts – including Pirro and Maria Bartiromo – made comments about the election, they believed the claims of potential fraud they were discussing could have merit, the network’s lawyers argued. “The evidence uniformly shows that the hosts and their teams subjectively believed the President’s claims were plausible, and that is all that matters,” the network argued.
On Wednesday, Smartmatic accused Fox of deleting text message evidence from key executives, including Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. The company wants the jury to be told that Fox deleted evidence that would have bolstered the case against it. In response, Fox accused Smartmatic of resurrecting “stale, baseless discovery issues that actually were disclosed by Fox and resolved two years ago.”
The parties could still choose to settle the case, as Smartmatic did with lawsuits against two other conservative media companies, Newsmax and One America News. Doing so would spare key Smartmatic and Fox executives, including the Murdochs, from having to take the stand.
