Fox News host Sean Hannity admitted under oath that he did not believe Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s claims of fraud in the 2020 election despite promoting those claims on his show.
According to the New York Times, Hannity admitted that he didn’t believe Powell’s claims of widespread election fraud during a deposition earlier this year in Dominion Voting Systems $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
“I did not believe it for one second,” Hannity testified at the time.
Even though he didn’t believe those claims, Hannity hosted Powell on his show after the election as she spread bizarre conspiracy theories about Dominion such as their machines allegedly running an algorithm that switched votes for Trump to then-candidate Joe Biden.
Hannity’s comments were revealed in a pretrial hearing on Wednesday to address several issues that needed to be resolved before the jury trial next April.
According to The Times, to meet the high legal standard of proof in defamation cases, attorneys for Dominion will need to persuade the jury that the network employees were saying one thing in private while telling their viewers the exact opposite.
Hannity’s deposition suggests that at least some Fox News personalities were aware the claims about a stolen election were lies, yet they broadcasted it on their shows anyway with very little to no push back.
