The chairman of Fox Corp. Rupert Murdoch, was worried that Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity “went too far” in endorsing Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, according to new court filings in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox.
In a January 21, 2021 email to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott Murdoch wrote: “Big morning with McConnell meeting with Graham and other anti-impeachers. Still getting mud thrown at us! Is it “unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th an important chance to have the result overturned”?
“Maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” Murdoch wrote. “All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump but what did he tell his viewers?”
In a statement on Tuesday, Fox News accused Dominion of dishonestly portraying internal communications between top figures at the company.
“Thanks to today’s filings, Dominion has been caught red handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” the statement said. “We already know they will say and do anything to try to win this case, but to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”
