The 2020 presidential election is history, but a legal dispute about FOX News report on President Trump’s false claims about voters fraud has been warmed up.
A motion for a brief judgment by tuning equipment company Smartmatic went on Tuesday in the New York Supreme Court in detail how fake accusations that the voting manipulated to swing the elections to Joe Biden were strengthened on Fox News.
The motion also described how the FOX News Media – Gastheren who are defendants are in the court case – the late Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business – reportedly committed themselves to help Trump prove his fraud theories so that he could remain in office.
“I work so hard for the president and the party,” Pirro wrote in a text to Ronna McDaniel, then chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Pirro left Fox News in May to become American lawyers for the District of Columbia.
SmartMatic suits FOX News for $ 2.7 billion in compensation and claims that the broadcast of the false statements of the network of the capacity of the London -based company to expand its activities in the US damage
Fox News arranged a similar suit from Dominion voice systems for $ 787.5 million in 2023.
The motion claimed that on-Air Hosts repeated the fraud claims, although managers and producers were told that they were incorrect.
The FOX News Research Department, known as the ‘Brainroom’, has reportedly informed informed network producers that the role of SmartMatic was limited to Los Angeles County in the 2020 elections and that the software of the company was not used in Dominion stem machines, another false claim.
FOX News maintains the report of the network on the false claims of President Trump were newsworthy and protected by the 1st amendment. But part of the company’s legal strategy is aimed at minimizing the claims for damages.
FOX News has claimed that all the problems that SmartMatic has experienced in attracting new companies, not rooted in the report, but in the federal research into the activities of the company with overseas governments.
Last year the founder of SmartMatic, Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez, and two other business officers were sued by the office of the American lawyers and accused of bribing Filipino officials to get voting contracts in the country in 2016.
Although the claims of the Trump camp that the elections were established were not believed in FOX News and parent company Fox Corp., the conservative network gave them to keep oxygen to coordinate his audience, the motion claimed.
Read more: Fox News -Echer Maria Bartiromo is in the front and in the middle of Dominion’s slaspack
The motion described a “pivot” that took place on November 8, 2020, when Fox News Executive chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Fox News Media asked Chief Executive Suzanne Scott to tackle the deterioration of the network’s rates after Bides was explained the winner of the elections. The network also looked at research to evaluate why viewers left.
“The conclusion has been reached on the basis of performance analyzes: give the public more election fraud,” said the court document.
Such a thinking, the submission said, the company permeated, panicked in panic about losing viewers on the right -loving network newsmax. The tail exit saw a reviews after Biden’s victory because of the relentive support for Trump’s claims.
“Think about how incredibly our reviews were if Fox were to go all the way in Stop The Steal,” Fox News -Gastheer Jesse Waters said in a text to his colleague Greg Gutfeld.
In November and December 2020, the three hosts were mentioned in the Pak, Dobbs, Pirro and Bartiromo, repeatedly Trump’s lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell as guests. They spread the lies that smartmatic software was used in Dominion voice machines and changed millions of votes.
The work of SmartMatic in Los Angeles during the 2020 elections was intended as an access point for the company to expand its domestic activities. The defamation of the company claims that FOX News has erased that efforts by presenting the false fraud claims.
But Fox News believes that problems with the $ 282 million contract from SmartMatic with Los Angeles County can help promote his business.
On August 1, federal public prosecutors who submit a legal assignment and claimed that tax payment funds from the province went into a slush fund of a Shell Company to help pay its illegal activities.
Federal Public Prosecutors who treat the case involving Smartmatic’s company in the Philippines, said they are planning to describe similar alleged schemes from La County and Venezuela to show that the bribery fits a larger pattern.
Fox News lawyers have asked a briefly established to ask provincial files that, according to them, will help strengthen their business. The network is also expected to try to get the smartmatic charges in court to set up doubts about the reputation of the company.
A smartmatic representative said that the record request from FOX News is a diversion stactic.
“Fox is and when they are caught, they are again to distract,” said a smartmatic representative in a statement. “The newest request from Fox is just another attempt to divert attention from his long -term campaign of lies and slander against SmartMatic.”
The company added that it adhered to the Los Angeles County law and “any jurisdiction where we operate.”
SmartMatics on Tuesday judicial archiving also contained information that contradicted public statements FOX News at that time.
The document claimed that FOX News the political analyst Chris Stirewalt and the Oude Washington Bureau -Extors Bill Sammon fired for their involvement in calling the state of Arizona for Biden on election evening. The early call of the close result in the state disturbed the Trump camp and alienated its supporters.
At the time, Fox News said that Stirewalt left as part of a reorganization and Sammon retired.
But the motion said that Rupert Murdoch himself signed the decision to break Stirewalt and Sammon of the company in an attempt to mitigate angry viewers that die.
The motion mentioned a communication by Dana Perino, co-gastheer of Fox News Show “The Five”, in which a phone call with Stirewalt is described after his resignation.
“I explained to him – you were right, you didn’t win and you were fired because you did the right thing,” said Perino.
Both Sammon and Stirewalt now work in the Washington Bureau of Newsnation, the cable news network that is owned by Nexstar Media Group.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
