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Up next: Smartmatic, which seeks $2.7 billion in damages, a shareholder lawsuit, a Federal Election Commission complaint and a pair of suits from a former news producer.
By Winston Cho
Fox Corp. may have settled the defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, but it still faces sprawling litigation related to its claims of election fraud.
Even after paying $787.5 million to end the case, Fox has to deal with a second defamation suit brought by another election technology company, Smartmatic, which seeks $2.7 billion.
Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, Rudy Guiliani and Sidney Powell are all named as defendants in the suit filed in February 2021 in New York State Supreme Court. Smartmatic argues that it only provided election technology and software in Los Angeles County but that the network and its commentators portrayed it as a “Venezuelan company under the control of corrupt dictators from socialist countries,” says the complaint. In their story, Smartmatic’s tech was used to switch and alter votes in many of the states with close outcomes in the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost. The company points to several other false statements from the network, including that its software sent votes to foreign countries for manipulation, its technology was hacked and that it was previously banned from being used in U.S. elections, among others.
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In February, a state appeals court turned down Fox’s bid to dismiss the suit. The justices said in a unanimous decision that Smartmatic sufficiently alleged that Fox and its anchors “effectively endorsed and participated in the statements with reckless disregard for, or serious doubts about, whether the assertions or implications that plaintiff had participated in election fraud had any basis in truth or were supported by any reliable evidence.” They also revived some claims against Pirro and Guiliani.
Fox is currently fighting a motion calling for Fox News and Fox Corporation to produce all deposition transcripts and exhibits for every witness in the Dominion case. (One example of the revealing discovery process from the Dominion case: An email from Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch on Nov. 7, 2020 to a longtime lieutenant, Col Allan, who worked at the New York Post tabloid, offering his take on Giuliani. “Just saw Rudy ranting. Terrible influence on Donald,” Murdoch wrote, days after the Nov. 3 presidential election.)
The defense has maintained that Smartmatic should only get discovery that is relevant to the case, which it argues is much narrower. A hearing is scheduled for April 26.
“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” said Fox in a statement. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”
There’s also a pair of suits filed in New York and Delaware by Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who alleges that Fox’s lawyers intimidated and misinformed her as they prepared her in connection with deposition testimony she gave in the Dominion case. She claims that her attorneys told her not to be “too candid.”
The suit could potentially reveal additional information related to the Dominion legal fight since it implicates her testimony in the case. When asked by Dominion lawyers whether it was important for Fox to correct misinformation spread by guests on her show, she replied “No,” according to the suit. She has revised her deposition in the Dominion case to say that Fox producers are “activists, not journalists.”
Additionally, Grossberg, who’s currently on administrative leave after serving as the head of booking on the Tucker Carlson Tonight, details in her suit a “misogynistic environment” at the network where minorities and “female workers are verbally violated on almost a daily basis.”
Fox countersued Grossberg to restrict her from sharing confidential information learned from discussions with company lawyers.
“FOX News Media engaged an independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns raised by Ms. Grossberg, which were made following a critical performance review,” Fox said in a statement. “Her allegations in connection with the Dominion case are baseless and we will vigorously defend Fox against all of her legal claims which have no merit.”
In the same court, Fox’s board of directors faces a shareholder suit accusing them of failing to stop the network from reporting lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in violation of their fiduciary duty. It faults them “expos[ing] the company to public ridicule” as well as two defamation suits seeking more than $4 billion and undermining Fox’s credibility as a media organization.
The complaint heavily borrows from discovery in the Dominion case that produced a trove of internal company communications and documents backing up claims that executives and anchors at Fox knew the conspiracies they broadcasted were false.
“FOX knew — from the Board on down — that Fox News was reporting false and dangerous misinformation about the 2020 Presidential election, but FOX was more concerned about short-term ratings and market share than the long-term damages of its failure to tell the truth,” reads the complaint.
Fox has made several statements in securities filings underplaying its potential legal liability in defamation suits. “The Company believes these lawsuits, including the Smartmatic and Dominion matters, are without merit and intends to defend against them vigorously,” reads a filing from Feb. 2023. “The Company does not currently anticipate that the ultimate resolution of any such pending matters will have a material adverse effect on its business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.”
Los Angeles lawyer Ryan Saba says the shareholder suit is “strengthened by the settlement” because it undermines statements from Fox that it didn’t believe the Dominion suit would have an impact on company operations. He adds, “The shareholders don’t have to prove there was slander either. They only have to prove [the board] mismanaged the funds. It’s an easier standard.”
At the same time, Fox is contending with a complaint over allegations that Murdoch gave confidential information in 2020 to former president Donald Trump’s campaign. In a suit filed with the Federal Election Commission, progressive watchdog group Media Matters claims that Fox made an illegal contribution to Trump’s political action committee when Murdoch shared then-candidate Joe Biden’s campaign advertisements with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The complaint was filed after a filing in the Dominion case revealed that Murdoch gave Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they went public, citing a deposition from the network chief and internal company communications.
The Federal Election Campaign Act prohibits campaign contributions from corporations, including direct or indirect gifts of money or services. The FEC considers information about advertising, messaging and other campaign strategy a contribution, according to the complaint.
In a statement at the time, Fox said Murdoch “forwarded an already-publicly available Biden campaign ad which was available on YouTube and had even run on public airwaves.”
“Dominion has been caught red handed again using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” it added.
Saba says that Fox will likely settle the remaining cases to “put this chapter behind them.” He notes it would be odd for the network to settle what could’ve been the easiest to escape with a low damages verdict without resolving the rest.
For the Dominion case, jurors would’ve had to unanimously agree that that Fox acted with “actual malice” — meaning that the network knew its statements about election fraud were false or acted with reckless disregard to the truth.
“The expectation is that Fox will likely settle those cases over time,” he says. “It would be odd to settle the big fight but not the sideshow fights.”
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