Dominion Voting Wants To Question Fox News' Pirro

Dominion Voting Systems is putting Fox News star "Judge Jeanine" Pirro back on the legal hot seat in its clash with the network in a $1.6 billion defamation suit over baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 elections, NPR is reporting.

In documents filed in a Delaware courthouse, the voting tech company explicitly identified Pirro, a former Westchester County district attorney and New York state judge, as central to its case. Its filings argue that by questioning Pirro, Dominion can meet the key legal threshold of proving Fox showed "actual malice" when it broadcast false claims the firm sought to throw the race to Joe Biden over then-President Donald Trump.

Jeanine Pirro

The case is at a pre-trial phase of the litigation, where both sides are able to obtain testimony and documentary evidence from key figures in a process called "discovery."

"Discovery has revealed that...Fox News host Jeanine Pirro help[ed] spread the verifiably false yet devastating lies against Dominion," the company's lawyers wrote in the legal documents.

Earlier this month, NPR revealed that a Fox producer had warned colleagues in an email against putting Pirro on the air in the days after the election, saying she was pulling conspiracy theories from extremist conspiracy-minded websites to justify Trump's lies. That was just one example of the vast cache of documents and testimony that Dominion has acquired.

Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell made false allegations on Pirro's show.

Now, Dominion is pointing to a November 14, 2020 segment in which Pirro invited on Trump's campaign attorney, Sidney Powell, to make unsubstantiated claims that were disputed at the time and swiftly discredited.

"She not only allowed Ms. Powell to air such nonsense, not only amplified it on her Justice with Judge Jeanine program," Dominion's attorneys wrote, "[but] Ms. Pirro's conduct and role in the spread of this disinformation lies at the heart of Dominion's claims."

Pirro is not named as a defendant in Dominion's suit against Fox and its parent company, Fox Corp. Powell and others are being sued by Dominion separately.

Powell alleged, among other claims, that computer codes were overwritten to manipulate Dominion software and that statistical and mathematical evidence showed votes were flipped from Trump to Biden. Those claims and others she made were false. Pirro did read Dominion's denials on the air.

Fox News declined comment, as did its lead outside trial attorney, Dan Webb, through a network spokeswoman. In an earlier interview with NPR, Webb said that Fox News was merely covering inherently newsworthy claims by inherently newsworthy people - meaning a sitting president and his campaign lawyers and advisers contesting a presidential election. That newsworthiness, he argued, exists regardless of the accuracy or fairness of the claims.