by - Rupert Murdoch suggested that three Fox News hosts could go on air and announce Biden as the winner in 2020.
- Messages between Fox News’ top brass suggest they knew Trump had lost, but conspiracy theories still abounded.
- The filing, part of Dominion’s defamation lawsuit, reveals the inner workings of Fox after the election.
Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, once suggested that Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham could go on air and declare that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
The conversations between Fox News executives were revealed in a 200-page filing on Thursday by lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems as part of their defamation lawsuit against the network.
On January 5, 2021, Murdoch sent an email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott: “It has been suggested that all three of our prime time should independently or together say something like ‘the election is over, and Joe Biden won .'”
He said such a statement “would go a long way to stopping Trump’s myth that the election was stolen.”
Scott then forwarded Murdoch’s suggestion to Meade Cooper, SVP of primetime programming. He wrote: “I told Rupert that they are all there in private – we have to be careful about using the shows and attracting the audience but they know how to navigate.”
The lengthy filing reveals the inner workings of the Fox News network after the 2020 election.
Text messages and emails between Fox hosts and executives reveal that while they privately accepted that Donald Trump lost the election, the network continued to air pro-Trump conspiracy theories about election fraud.
Murdoch privately described the election fraud claims as “damaging” and “insane,” according to the filing.
When Trump became president, Murdoch, and his media, especially Fox News, supported him in a marriage often referred to as a marriage of convenience.
However, the relationship broke down over the years, and in 2020 Fox News was the first network to call Arizona in favor of Biden, which angered Trump.
The rift between Trump and the Murdoch empire continues to widen, especially after the Republican party’s lackluster performance in the 2022 midterm elections, which was widely blamed on Trump.
Despite this, many Fox News hosts have continued to publicly point out Trump’s attention.
Dominion’s defamation lawsuit is seeking $1.6 billion in damages and claims Fox News pushed a conspiracy theory that the election technology company helped track the 2020 presidential election for its own commercial gain. Dominion claims that their business and employees have suffered as a result.
Fox News has previously denied the accusations and said it fairly reported on the election and its outcome.
“Dominion’s motion for summary judgment takes an unsupported extreme view of defamation law and rests on an account of facts that are unfounded in the record,” a Fox News spokesperson previously told Insider about Thursday’s court filing.
“Dominion has lost the record, removed key context from cherry-picked quotes, and spilled significant ink on irrelevant facts about black-letter principles of defamation law.”
A representative for Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
