Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham insult Trump henchmen Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani in texts, court filing reveals
Fox news hosts and producers privately shared misgivings about former President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election despite their networks promoting his claims, Dominion Voting Systems alleged in a new court filing, the New York Times reports.
The newly disclosed messages are part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the media giant; Dominion, an election technology company, is seeking damages from Fox News for airing conspiracy theories about voting machine fraud.
Host Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, as well as others, disparaged Trump’s henchmen, including Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani in messages — casting doubt on claims that Dominion’s machines had rigged the presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor, according to the legal filing made public on Thursday. Dominion alleges that the network’s hosts gave Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani a platform to lie about the voting process.
“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS,’” the filing states, which cited excerpts from evidence collected in the suit. The nearly 200-page court filing includes text messages, internal emails, and depositions Dominion gathered via discovery from Fox News over the past few months.
Fox was the first cable news network to project Biden’s win in Arizona, triggering a slew of angry messages from Trump’s camp and a drop in ratings as viewers defected to conservative alternatives Newsmax and OAN.
Carlson texted his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, two days after Election Day 2020 warning that the network’s decision to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night would have severe repercussions for Fox News.
“We worked really hard to build what we have,” Carlson messaged Pfeiffer on Nov. 5, 2020 according to the filing. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”
Pfeiffer responded that “many on ‘our side’ are being reckless demagogues right now.”
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“Of course they are,” Carlson wrote. “We’re not going to follow them.” He added that Trump was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
On Nov. 13, per the document, Carlson texted Pfeiffer that Trump needed to concede “that there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election, and later texted that Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, was “lying” about having evidence for election fraud.
In another text exchange a few days later, as stated in the legal filing, Carlson repeated his concerns to Ingraham, writing that “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 responded, “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”
The filing also alleges that Powell told Fox employees and host Maria Bartiromo that she relied on sources that made her unreliable. The suit states that before Powell’s Nov. 8, 2020 appearance on Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures show, the “evidence” Powell provided to back her false accusations that Dominion manipulated the election was from an individual who described herself as “internally decapitated” and capable of “time travel in a semi-conscious state.”
Following a Nov. 19 broadcast of a press conference where Giuliani and Powell echoed their false claims that the election was rigged, Carlson went on his show to say that Powell had described “the single greatest crime in American history.” Yet Carlson also admitted that “she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests,” and closed his show by expressing his hope that “Sidney Powell will come forward soon with details on exactly how this happened, and precisely who did it.”
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The broadcast received backlash from viewers, the filing states.
On Jan. 6, 2021 Carlson messaged Pfeiffer, and called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer,” adding, “But he’s not going to destroy us.” Despite this, just three weeks later, the host invited his leading sponsor Mike Lindell on his show; Lindell proceeded to repeat Powell’s conspiracies on air, even previewing them for Carlson’s staff.
Fox, in a statement to ABC News, wrote, “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”
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In its motion for summary judgment filed Thursday, per ABC, Fox claimed that “statements Dominion challenges are not actionable defamation because Fox News’ coverage and commentary are not only not defamatory, but also protected by the First Amendment and New York doctrines emanating from it.”
By Nov. 12, the consequences of the accusations of the voter fraud narrative sunk in. In a message that day to Carlson and Ingraham, per the filing, Hannity wrote, “In one week and one debate they destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable.”
