Fox News may have to hand over the performance reviews of Tucker Carlson and other top on-air personalities if its foe in a defamation lawsuit over election rigging gets its way, reports Bloomberg.
Dominion Voting Systems Inc., the voting machine company falsely accused of rigging the 2020 U.S. presidential election, has asked a judge to order Fox to release three years of job evaluations for Carlson, Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, who allegedly helped spread the conspiracy theory.
Having the reviews will help boost the $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox if they reveal a pattern of lying and show the network acted with actual malice, Dominion said in a court filing Thursday. The lawsuit is one of several multi billion-dollar cases brought by Dominion over debunked claims that it conspired with foreign hackers and corrupt election workers to flip votes away from former President Donald Trump.
The reviews are among a slew of documents Dominion says Fox has resisted turning over. The company is seeking communications about the Trump administration’s reaction over the network’s coverage of the election at the time, as well as “the effect of that reaction on Fox’s ratings and viewership,” Dominion said.
“This discovery goes to Fox’s motivation for its publication of the defamatory statements, namely Fox’s attempts to increase ratings and to please President Trump, which goes to establishing malice,” Dominion said in the filing. Malice is the level of intent a company is required to prove in a defamation case.
Fox has argued Dominion cannot prove actual malice and that the network was simply doing its job by reporting on a major controversy tied to the election. The network is awaiting a ruling on its motion to dismiss the Dominion suit.
Me thinks Dominion doth protest too much.
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