Revealed: Fox News Executives and Talk Hosts Privately Trashed Lies Pushed by Former President Donald Trump and His Legal Team

A stunning legal filing made public on Thursday has revealed the inner workings of Fox News in the weeks and months following the 2020 presidential election. The filing is part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News.

The legal filing includes a trove of text messages and emails that show Fox News executives and talk hosts privately trashing lies pushed by former President Donald Trump and his legal team. In a November 2020 text message, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch said the lies were “really crazy stuff, and damaging.”

The correspondence reveals that the network’s senior-most executives and highest-profile hosts chose not to disclose what they believed to be the truth of the election out of fear that the facts would alienate Fox News’ audience and throw the highly profitable business into ruin.

The lies included a bizarre, incomprehensible tale of a rigged election that involved voting machine software manipulation “created in Venezuela” at the direction of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had died seven years earlier. This was presented by Trump-supporting lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell during a press conference. Fox News host Tucker Carlson flatly told a producer that “Sidney Powell is lying.”

The legal filing has shed light on how Fox News operated with little regard for fact in the weeks and months following the 2020 presidential election. The filing is part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News.