Fox News hosts and execs not only didn't believe the election fraud claims the network gave a lot of airtime to in 2020, they privately mocked guests like Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, according to a Thursday filing in Dominion Voting System's defamation lawsuit against the network. "Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane," Tucker Carlson wrote in a Nov. 18 message to Laura Ingraham, per the New York Times. She replied: "Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy." Dominion says no Fox witnesses have testified that they believed the allegations about its machines being used to "steal" the 2020 election from then-President Trump. In a deposition, Sean Hannity said, "that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second." More:
- Lies were "good for business." The defamation suit argues that Fox pushed election conspiracy theories because they were "good for Fox's business," CNN reports. Numerous messages in Thursday's filing show how hosts and execs, worried about losing viewers to Newsmax, pushed back against people challenging the false claims. After correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a Trump tweet claiming there was election fraud, Carlson asked host Sean Hannity to "please get her fired." "It needs to stop immediately, like tonight," he wrote. "It’s measurably hurting the company." Heinrich's tweet was deleted the next day.