Much has been made about the steady but nonetheless shocking information coming from the internal communication in the Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Tucker Carlson, the right-wing firebrand that he is, said he hates Trump “passionately,” while no less than Rupert Murdoch said he longed for Trump’s irrelevance.
While these statements are a spectacle that delights the public, it remains unclear how they will factor into the suit. Lawyers and scholars say some of the most headline-grabbing sound bytes are no more than that–and wouldn’t be introduced as evidence. The First Amendment is a powerful legal defense for Fox, as they can claim broad leeway to cover elections and politics as they wish.
The question of endorsement is critical, and Dominion’s case is an unusually strong one. If they can successfully argue that Fox knowingly aired misinformation or neglected to air accurate information, then they have a solid shot at winning. The internal messages would only aid that cause if they can be used to demonstrate that Fox endorses the voting machine conspiracies for ratings.
But the craziest evidence might not be from the A-list lineup. Take an email from a woman named Marlene Bourne, that was sent to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who then forwarded it to Fox host Maria Bartiromo, who then forwarded it to her producer. The email is a cesspool of extreme delusions: Bourne claims there are conspirators in on a plot to discredit Trump, including some dead ones like the late CEO of Fox News Roger Ailes. She writes that she is capable of “time-travel in a semiconscious state” and that she can “see what others don’t see, and hear what others don’t hear.” She also says she has been decapitated and was a ghost.
The next day, Fox aired an interview that was pre-taped featuring Bartiromo and Powell on Bartiromo’s show, Sunday Morning Futures that touched heavily on the email. Despite Bartiromo describing the email as “kooky,” she decided it had content worthy of airtime. How airing such disreputable material might be used to further discredit Fox may provide an interesting development.
