Courting Disaster: Dominion Voting Systems Suit Against Fox News Settles!

Update: As the jury was seated today for the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News trial, "The parties have resolved their case," the judge announced. The terms are confidential (for now), but here's the backstory:

On November 12, 2020, still-President Donald Trump, refusing to surrender the White House, let loose with a barrage of tweets, including this:

“REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED. STATES USING DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN.”

In response, after a week of rumors labeling the company as the chief culprit in suspected voting fraud that had rigged the election for Joe Biden, Dominion Voting Systems — one of the most widely used voting equipment companies in the U.S., providing machines and software for more than 1,300 jurisdictions — posted a “setting the record straight” statement on dominionvoting.com on November 13:

“Dominion Voting Systems categorically denies false assertions about vote switching issues with our voting systems,” it read. “According to a joint statement by the federal government agency that oversees U.S. election security, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): ‘There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.’ The government & private sector councils that support this mission called the 2020 election ‘the most secure in American history.’”

That was followed by a point-by-point debunking of numerous rumors, including the Pennsylvania vote deletion accusation, Sharpie pen conspiracies, and theories suggesting that Dominion has ownership relationships with members of the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, the Clinton Global Initiative...and Venezuela. In reality, the website noted, “Dominion is a nonpartisan U.S. company."

Specifically, it's a non-partisan U.S. company whose headquarters are in Denver, the capital city of a state where 62 out of 64 counties use Dominion Voting Systems products — and a state that's repeatedly been cited for having the "gold standard" of fair and honest elections.

Founded as a Canadian company in 2003, Dominion Voting Systems was incorporated in the United States in 2009, when it set up offices in Denver, ultimately landing in a space above the Old Spaghetti Factory at 1801 Lawrence Street.

Throw enough spaghetti at the wall, though, and ultimately something might stick in the mind of a Fox News viewer — even as the accusations start sliding into ignominy, like the hair dye on Rudy Giuliani's temple during the November 19, 2020, press conference where he shared more accusations about Dominion's alleged vote-rigging.

Watching Fox News's coverage of that press conference, Rupert Murdoch, head of the empire that owns the network, sent an email to Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us, too.”

Maybe even $1.6 billion worth.

That's how much Dominion is asking for in damages in the defamation suit it filed against Fox News Networks in March 2021; it's also filed suit against Trump lawyers Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who joined the former New York City mayor at that disastrous November 19 press conference, and Mike "My Pillow" Lindell, as well as Newsmax and One America News Network, both conservative media outlets that had been cutting into Fox's audience with their own batshit-crazy accusations.

Although defamation suits are notoriously difficult to pursue, with a high burden of proof, Dominion has survived every legal challenge so far. Jury selection in its case against Fox started on April 13 in Delaware; the trial begins today, April 18, and is expected to last five weeks.

In January, both parties filed motions for summary judgment with Judge Eric M. Davis.

Fox asked that the suit be tossed. Dominion asked that the case be decided in its favor even before a trial. Dominion's 192-page filing was heavily redacted, but still full of evidence from depositions and discovery documents that Fox knew it was promoting falsehoods, including this exchange:

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” star host Tucker Carlson emailed Laura Ingraham on November 18, 2020.

Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Carlson's reply: “Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”

And after that candid conversation between two Fox stars, Carlson continued hosting Powell and fellow election deniers on his show, as did other hosts, sharing their debunked accusations with the "good people" who watched Fox. While the law shields journalists from liability if they unknowingly report on false statements, those protections are lost if they continue to promote statements that they know are false. And Dominion is out to prove that the country’s most popular news network did just that in a reckless pursuit of ratings.

Some Fox employees recognized the truth and stuck by it, according to the depositions. Anchor Dana Perino, who was raised in Denver, used some Mile High City smarts when she called allegations of voter fraud against Dominion "total bs," "insane" and "nonsense."

But more bombshells landed on Fox on February 27, these lobbed by Rupert Murdoch himself. In his deposition, he acknowledged that several Fox hosts had "endorsed' baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump through voter fraud. "I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight," Murdoch said. He also admitted that he could have made sure that Powell and Giuliani did not appear on Fox shows, but "I didn't."

Asked if he thought Trump was wrong to say that the election had been stolen, Murdoch replied: “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up.”

On February 28, Trump tweeted his response to that: "Why is Rupert Murdoch throwing his anchors under the table, which also happens to be killing his case and infuriating his viewers, who will again be leaving in droves — they already are."

Fox offered its own response to that Murdoch deposition release: “Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny."

You can expect plenty of headlines, as well as endless legal scrutiny, as the trial proceeds...if it does. The Wall Street Journal just reported that Fox and former host Lou Dobbs settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil, who claimed he was falsely accused of having helped Dominion and Smartmatic USA Corp. — another voting machine company that's filed its own defamation suits — rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election against Trump.

But after two and a half years of threats and actual attacks that led Dominion to move its Denver office not once, but twice (in mid-November 2020, a crisis communicator asked us to remove our photo of the Old Spaghetti Factory building from our Dominion coverage, but the damage had already gone far too deep, and instead the employees were removed), the company has nothing left to lose...and a lot to gain.

While the judge did not grant Dominion's request for summary judgment after two days of hearings last month, Judge Davis did offer several other gifts.

The evidence is “CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” he wrote in his 81-page decision, citing the assertions that the company was controlled by Venezuela and employed an algorithm to boost the Democratic vote count.

Still, Davis said, there was some uncertainty about who knew what at the time that Fox News aired falsehoods — and who authorized those broadcasts. “The Court does not weigh the evidence to determine who may have been responsible for publication and if such people acted with actual malice – these are genuine issues of material fact and therefore must be determined by a jury,” he ruled.

And that jury will be able to hear from Rupert Murdoch in person, the judge determined, along with such Fox stalwarts as Carlson, Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo.

Davis did throw Fox a bone, though: Because nearly all of the statements cited in the case were made before January 6, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol would not be a part of the Dominion trial.

By January 6, 2021, Dominion and its employees had already weathered almost two months of Fox-fueled fury from #StoptheSteal election deniers, and it has not ended yet.

“What parties were thinking in January is not very relevant, if at all, to what happened in November and December,” the judge said. “Fox is not the cause of Jan. 6 in its relation to Dominion. I do think that’s a really big issue that has to be stayed away from.” At this trial, at least.

But that can be decided in the court of public opinion. "Foxitis" drove his client to storm the Capitol, one attorney has charged. “He believed what was being fed to him.”