Fox News Lawyers Threaten Legal Action

Fox News told Tucker Carlson's lawyers Wednesday that the former star anchor breached his contract with the conservative network when he released the first episode of a new show on Twitter this week, according to NBC News citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Carlson parted ways wirh Fox News in late April, days after the network agreed to pay nearly $800M to Dominion Voting Systems to avert a high-stakes defamation trial.

In a letter to Carlson's lawyers, Fox News general counsel Bernard Gugar said the broadcaster was "in breach" of his contract, which was signed in November 2019 and amended in February 2021.

In a statement, Carlson's lawyer, Bryan Freedman, insisted that any legal action by Fox News would infringe on Carlson's First Amendment rights.

"Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds," Freedman said. "Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events."

The news was first reported by Axios. NBC News has not seen a copy of the letter; the source with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed that all of the information in the Axios article was accurate.

Top spokespeople at Fox News did not immediately respond to an NBC News email and a text message requesting comment on the Axios report.