The 2020 presidential election is history, but a legal dispute over Fox News’ reporting on President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud is heating up.
A motion for summary judgment by voting equipment company Smartmatic filed Tuesday in New York Supreme Court laid out in detail how phony allegations that it manipulated votes to swing the election to Joe Biden were amplified on Fox News.
The motion also described how the Fox News hosts who are defendants in the suit – the late Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business – were allegedly committed to helping Trump prove his fraud theories so he could remain in office.
“I work so hard for the President and the party,” Pirro wrote in a text to Ronna McDaniel, then chair of the Republican National Committee.
Pirro left Fox News in May to become U.S.attorney for the District of Columbia.
Smartmatic is suing Fox News for $2.7 billion in damages, claiming that the network’s airing of the false statements hurt the London-based company’s ability to expand its business in the U.S.
Fox News settled a similar suit from Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million in 2023.
The motion alleged that on-air hosts repeated the fraud claims even though executives and producers were told they were false.
The Fox news research department, known as the “Brainroom,” allegedly informed network producers that Smartmatic’s role in the 2020 election was limited to Los Angeles County and that the company’s software was not used in Dominion voting machines, another false claim made on the air.
Fox News maintains the network’s reporting on President Trump’s false claims were newsworthy and protected by the 1st Amendment. But part of the company’s legal strategy has been focused on minimizing the damage claims.
Fox News has asserted that any problems Smartmatic has experienced in attracting new business are rooted not in its reporting but in the federal inquiry into the company’s activities with overseas governments.
Last year, smartmatic’s founder, Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez, and two other company officials were indicted by the U.S. attorney’s office and charged with bribing Philippine officials in order to get voting machine contracts in the country in 2016.
While the Trump camp’s assertions that the election was fixed were not believed throughout Fox News and parent company Fox Corp., the conservative-leaning network continued to give them oxygen to keep its audience tuned in, the motion alleged.The motion described a “pivot” that occurred on Nov. 8, 2020, when then-Fox News Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan asked Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott to address the decline in the network’s ratings after Biden was declared the winner of the election. The network also loo