Revealed: How Fox prime-time hosts and executives attacked Fox reporters who fact-checked Trumpworld’s 2020 election lies
These attacks occurred even though the Fox execs and prime-time hosts knew the claims were lies
Written by Zachary Pleat
Published
A new filing by Dominion Voting Systems for a motion for summary judgment in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News revealed that multiple Fox executives and prime-time hosts privately attacked a handful of Fox hosts and reporters for fact-checking the 2020 election lies being spread by former President Donald Trump and his staff. The court document also exposed that these senior Fox personnel knew the Trumpworld claims were lies, even as the network continued to push them.
In March 2021, Dominion filed a defamation suit against Fox for the false claims the network pushed after the election. Those false claims were extensive: In the two-week period after Fox News declared Joe Biden the president-elect, the network questioned the results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories about it almost 800 times, including by using Dominion as a scapegoat and airing Trump campaign lies about Dominion voting machines getting hacked without any evidence.
Dominion filing shows senior Fox personnel criticized Fox reporters who fact-checked the election lies
The lightly redacted Dominion filing released on February 16 included specific instances of four Fox reporters and hosts who fact-checked or otherwise criticized the claims from Trump and his staffers, along with adverse reactions to these statements from senior Fox executives and prime-time hosts (emphasis added):
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Fox host Neil Cavuto broke away from an announcement by then-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and called her out for accusing Democrats of “rigging and cheating” without presenting proof.
In response to the Cavuto segment, Fox Corp.’s brand team under Senior Vice President Raj Shah “notified senior Fox News and Fox Corporation leadership of the ‘Brand Threat’ posed by Cavuto’s action.”
Citation From the November 9, 2020, edition of Fox News' Your World
NEIL CAVUTO (HOST): Whoa, whoa, whoa. I just think we have to be very clear that she's charging the other side is welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this. I want to make sure that maybe they do have something to back that up. But that's an explosive charge to make, that the other side is effectively rigging and cheating. If she does bring proof of that, of course we'll take you back. So far, she has started saying right at the outset welcoming fraud, welcoming illegal voting. Not so fast. We'll have more after this.
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Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich on November 12, 2020, fact-checked a tweet from Trump in which he recommended watching episodes from Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs and accused Dominion of being “used in States where tens of thousands of votes were stolen from us and given to Biden.” Heinrich noted that “top election infrastructure officials said on the record” that “‘the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history… There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.’"
Fox host Tucker Carlson tried to get Heinrich fired over her tweet. According to the filing, Carlson told Fox host Sean Hannity: “Please get her fired. Seriously….What the fuck? I’m actually shocked…It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” He added, “I just went crazy on Meade [Cooper, Fox’s executive vice president for prime-time programming] over it.” Hannity replied that he had “already” sent it to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott “with a really?” Hannity added: “I’m 3 strikes. Wallace shit debate Election night a disaster Now this BS? Nope. Not gonna fly. Did I mention Cavuto?”
The filing shows that Scott told Fox News President Jay Wallace and Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications Irena Briganti that “'Sean texted me—he’s standing down on responding but not happy about this and doesn’t understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone in news. She [Heinrich] has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.’”
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Then-Fox reporter Kristin Fisher fact-checked the Trump legal team’s wild November 19, 2020, press conference, which she called “light on facts” and largely “simply not true,” adding that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani “failed to provide any hard evidence.”
According to the filing, “Fox’s executives were not pleased” with Fisher’s fact check of the November 19 Giuliani press conference. It explains: “Fisher received a call from her boss, Bryan Boughton, immediately after in which he ‘emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it,’ and that Fisher ‘needed to do a better job of…—this is a quote—“respecting our audience.”’”
Citation From the November 19, 2020, edition of Fox News' The Daily Briefing
KRISTIN FISHER (FOX NEWS REPORTER): Well, that was certainly a colorful news conference from Rudy Giuliani, but it was light on facts. So much of what he said was simply not true or has already been thrown out in court. And, you know, Giuliani, he opened by making this really bold and baseless claim that a lot of this alleged nationwide voter fraud that he is referring to all came from one centralized place. He called it a nationwide conspiracy. And yet he failed to provide any hard evidence to back up that one specific claim, especially when you're dealing with a claim that really cuts to the core of our democratic process.
In Pennsylvania, Giuliani continued to claim widespread voter fraud in Philadelphia even though he has already said in court, and I quote: "This is not a fraud case." So what he's saying in public, not under oath, is different from what he said in court.
Moving on to Michigan, where the Trump campaign dropped its final federal lawsuit just this morning after two Republican canvassers in Wayne County say they now want to rescind their votes to certify the election. Giuliani says they dropped the lawsuit because the state did de-certify, but that is not true. The results were certified in Michigan on Tuesday, and Biden won. As for evidence, well, Giuliani kept holding up pages and pages of what he says are sworn affidavits, hundreds of them, people claiming voter fraud and irregularities. But he is declining to show them, to show all of them at least, and listen to his explanation why.
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FISHER: Now, up on that stage with Giuliani was a big poster with the headline “Multiple paths to victory.” But Giuliani never credibly explained a single path, let alone multiple ones. So, Dana, the fact remains that the Trump campaign has yet to provide, at least in court, hard evidence of voter fraud and irregularities widespread enough to overturn the outcome of the election and to effectively challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s stance as the president-elect.
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Fox anchor Dana Perino said on November 19 that the Giuliani press conference gave fodder for Dominion to “take some sort of action” in court.
The Fox executives were also upset with Perino: Her “comment resulted in Scott ‘screaming about Dana’s show and their reaction to the Rudy presser.’” She elaborated in “an email regarding both Perino and Fisher’s coverage, ‘[Y]ou can’t give the crazies an inch right now…they are looking for and blowing up all appearances of disrespect to the audience.’” She also noted: “‘The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us....We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.’”
Citation From the November 19, 2020, edition of Fox News' The Daily Briefing
DANA PERINO (ANCHOR): Let’s bring in Fox News contributor Karl Rove to help us with all of this. So, maybe -- your general takeaway from that 90-minute press conference today, Karl?
KARL ROVE (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Well, Mayor Giuliani said there was a centralized plot involving widespread voter fraud in big cities controlled by Democrats. Sidney Powell said the plot was communist in origin, that it had come from Venezuela and involved Hugo Chavez, and that George Soros and the Clinton Foundations were key participants in it, in the plot. These are serious, I think somewhat strange accusations, but serious and now both Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell have an obligation to go to court and prove them. Because we’re — these are questioning the fundamental fairness of our presidential election and alleging that there are conspirators who worked in major cities in an organized effort to engage in widespread voter fraud, and then foreign agents and powerful Americans, namely Soros and the Clinton Foundation, were involved.
So they've got an obligation to go to court and prove these, or the American people will have every reason to question their credibility. So, I’m not going to say that they don’t have proof. But they better come up with proof and go to court because these are serious allegations that basically say our election was manipulated by a combination of foreign and domestic actors and stolen. And that cannot be left just simply out there. It needs to be either proved or withdrawn. And the only way to do that is to take these accusations and go to court. Mayor Giuliani may be right that people who signed those affidavits don’t want their names exposed, but by God, you cannot make an accusation like that without following it through by going to court and trying to prove it. If it’s left out there it will be both unfair to the president if it’s true and unfair to the American people if it’s false.
PERINO: Dominion, the company that —
ROVE: Software.
PERINO: Yeah, the software company, you know, there was an accusation in that press conference that there's ties to Venezuela and more, you know, other things here. They've just put out a statement completely denying all of it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to take some sort of action against this because, as you said, they've had these allegations out there smearing an American company but where is — you know, are they going to take it to court? And where would they take that to court?
These same senior Fox personnel who criticized the fact checks also said they knew the Trumpworld claims about Dominion and the election were false
Quotes from the filing showed Fox’s executives and prime-time hosts knew they were lying about Dominion or the election at the time, including most of the specific personnel who attacked Fox reporters for fact-checking these lies:
- Fox star Tucker Carlson to his producer Alex Pfeiffer about Sidney Powell, one of Trump's campaign lawyers: “Powell is lying.”
- Carlson to fellow Fox News host Laura Ingraham: “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Carlson replied: “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”
- As the filing outlined, Carlson texted to a redacted name “that it was ‘shockingly reckless’ to claim that Dominion rigged the election ‘[i]f there’s no one inside the company willing to talk, or internal Dominion documents or copies of the software showing that they did it’ and ‘as you know there isn’t.’”
- Carlson to Ingraham: Powell’s “a nut, as you said at the outset. It totally wrecked my weekend. Wow... I had to try to make the WH disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before.” Ingraham responded to Carlson: “No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying.”
- Scott responded “Yes, I believe that,” to the question “You believe, since at least the time that Fox News called the election on November 7th, that Joe Biden was legitimately elected the President of the United States, correct?”
- Scott to Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch: “Viewers going through the 5 stages of grief. It’s a question of trust—the AZ [call] was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.” Murdoch replied: “Yes. But needs constant rebuilding without any missteps.” Scott responded: “Yes today is day one and it’s a process.”
- Scott: “Privately, I had a number of conversations with Sean where he wanted the President to accept the results.”
- Shah wrote: “shit is so crazy right now. so many people openly denying the obvious that Powell is clearly full of it.” Carlson’s producer Alex Pfeiffer replied: “She is a fucking nutcase.”