US judge in voting system defamation suit rebukes Fox News
Judge proposes sanctions after Fox News lawyers revealed they may have misrepresented Rupert Murdoch’s role.
A judge in the United States has rebuked a legal team representing Fox News after revelations that lawyers may have withheld information and misrepresented the role of co-founder Rupert Murdoch.
Delaware Supreme Court Justice Eric Davis also on Wednesday denied a request by the legal team to hold separate trials for Fox News and the network’s parent company, Fox Corporation.
“What should I do with lawyers who are not honest with me?” Davis asked the court, proposing sanctions for the Fox team.
The judge’s announcements are part of an ongoing defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems alleging that Fox News knowingly made false claims about its voting machines during the 2020 presidential election.
Those claims echoed baseless accusations from former President Donald Trump, who attributed his loss at the polls to a “rigged” election system.
When Dominion Voting Systems filed its lawsuit in 2021, Fox News attorneys claimed Murdoch had no official role at the conservative-leaning channel.
Fox lawyers have since reiterated that claim several times during court proceedings, while trying to shield Murdoch from liability in the lawsuit, portraying him as removed from the day-to-day operations of the news channel.
But on Sunday, Fox’s legal team reversed course and revealed to Dominion lawyers that Murdoch was indeed “executive chair” at Fox News.
Judge Davis expressed his displeasure with the late disclosures, which come just days before jury selection begins on Thursday.
“My problem is that I have been told more than once that he [Murdoch] is not an officer,” the judge told the court on Tuesday.
He specifically called in Fox attorney Matthew Carter. “You have a credibility problem,” Davis said.
Carter, meanwhile, argued that he had rather taken Murdoch’s title of “executive chair” as an “honorary title”.
Fox lawyers were also criticized for not sharing recordings of former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg with the Dominion legal team.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Fox News team denied withholding any evidence, writing, “As counsel explained to the court, FOX provided Ms. Grossberg’s additional information when we first learned.”
For his part, Dominion has argued that not disclosing Murdoch’s role has had “a major impact” on his ability to request documents that the media mogul may have had access to.
Dominion’s attorneys requested that all jurors selected for the trial be warned of “negative inferences” on the part of Fox attorneys – indicating that the requested evidence is lacking. But Judge Davis refused to rule on that request.
However, he opened up the possibility for Dominion’s legal team to retake testimony or request additional testimony. “Fox will make every effort to make the person available, and it will be at Fox’s expense,” according to an order published by the New York Times.
Bloomberg News suggested Murdoch himself could take the witness stand as early as Monday.
The defamation case has already resulted in unsealed testimony asking the media mogul if Fox News commentators endorsed 2020 presidential election conspiracy theories.
“Yes. They approved,” Murdoch replied.
Text messages also released as part of the lawsuit show a disconnect between what Fox News personalities said on screen and what they may have felt in private. For example, in a November 2020 text message, Fox News host Tucker Carlson appeared to accuse a Trump attorney of “lying” about the election fraud allegations.
Dominion Voting Systems is seeking $1.6 billion in damages. Fox News has argued that it was simply reporting on the allegations of Trump and his allies.