(FreedomBeacon.com)- In unsealed excerpts of Rupert Murdoch’s deposition in the Dominion defamation lawsuit, the Fox Corp. CEO admitted that some of the Fox News hosts endorsed the allegations that the 2020 election was stolen and Murdoch did nothing to stop them, CBS News reported on Monday.
When asked if he was aware that the Fox personalities named in the lawsuit, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, and Jeanine Pirro, had endorsed the stolen election claims, Murdoch acknowledged that they had.
Weeks before the 2020 election, Murdoch had called Lou Dobbs an “extremist” and urged that he be fired. He also said he thought it was a bad idea for Rudy Giuliani to advise Trump because he was an “extreme partisan” with bad judgment.
When asked if he could have requested that Giuliani and attorney Sidney Powell not be interviewed on Fox, Murdoch said he could have requested it, but acknowledged that he didn’t.
According to Dominion’s lawsuit, after the January 6 riot, former Speaker Paul Ryan, a Fox board member, emailed Murdoch telling him that the reason so many Americans think the 2020 election was stolen is that they are being fed a “diet of information” from “credible sources.” In his reply, Murdoch noted that the riot should be a “wake-up call” for Sean Hannity who has been “scared to lose viewers” even though he had “been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks.”
An earlier filing last month revealed that many of the hosts who aired the Trump team’s claims about the 2020 election were expressing doubts behind the scenes.
In a November 16, 2020 text message, Fox’s top-rated host Tucker Carlson accused Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell of lying about having evidence proving election fraud took place.
Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox and the four hosts, alleging that it suffered financial loss after the cable news giant knowingly spread false claims about Dominion machines by permitting guests to defame the company on the air.
In their court filing, attorneys for Fox note that in his deposition, Murdoch also admitted that he never discussed voter fraud or Dominion with any of the Fox News hosts named in the lawsuit. They argue that the depositions produced “zero evidentiary support” for Dominion’s claim that Fox’s top executives played a role in the publication of statements about voter fraud.
