Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said under oath that he believes the 2020 presidential election was free, fair, and not stolen, according to court filings released Tuesday in a voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit over Fox News’ coverage of former President Donald Trump’s unfounded election fraud claims. In sworn questioning in January by lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems, Murdoch was asked, "Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?" "Yes," he replied, according to a transcript. "The election was not stolen," he said later.
Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, saying the network crippled the company’s business by broadcasting false claims from Trump’s lawyers that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, the AP reports. Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in battleground states, and Trump’s attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they uncover any credible evidence that the vote was tainted. Trump’s allegations of fraud also have been roundly rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he had appointed.
Fox says Dominion is inventing its claims of lost business and has cherry-picked and misrepresented remarks by Fox hosts and leaders to paint a picture of a company that threw truth aside to keep its audience. "Dominion has been caught red-handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press," the company said in a statement Tuesday, complaining that "to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale." In testimony released last month, Murdoch said he wished Fox had been stronger in denouncing Trump's claims, which drew an angry response from the former president.
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