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      Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Trump’s Election Fraud Claims

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      The comments, by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems.Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.”On one occasion, as Mr. Murdoch watched Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on television, he told Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”Dominion’s brief depicts Ms. Scott, whom colleagues have described as sharply attuned to the sensibilities of the Fox audience, as being well aware that Mr. Trump’s claims were baseless. And when another Murdoch-owned property, The New York Post, published an editorial urging Mr. Trump to stop complaining that he had been cheated, Ms. Scott distributed it widely among her staff. Mr. Murdoch then thanked her for doing so, the brief says.The filing, in state court in Delaware, contains the most vivid and detailed picture yet of what went on behind the scenes at Fox News and its corporate parent in the days and weeks after the 2020 election, when the conservative cable network’s coverage took an abrupt turn.Fox News stunned the Trump campaign on election night by becoming the first news outlet to declare Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner of Arizona — effectively projecting that he would become the next president. Then, as Fox’s ratings fell sharply after the election and the president refused to concede, many of the network’s most popular hosts and shows began promoting outlandish claims of a far-reaching voter fraud conspiracy involving Dominion machines to deny Mr. Trump a second term.What was disclosed on Thursday was not the full glimpse of Dominion’s case against Fox. The 192-page filing had multiple redactions that contain more revelations about deliberations inside the network. Fox has sought to keep much of the evidence against it under seal. The New York Times is challenging the legality of those redactions in court.More on Fox NewsDefamation Case: ​​Some of the biggest names at Fox News are being questioned in the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. The suit could be one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.Merger Falls Through: Rupert Murdoch has halted his plans to combine News Corp and Fox Corporation, saying that a merger was “not optimal for shareholders.” The prospect had faced significant investor pushback.‘American Nationalist’: Tucker Carlson stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, the TV host transformed Fox News and became former President Donald J. Trump’s heir.Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.In its defense, which was also filed with the court on Thursday, Fox argued that by covering Mr. Trump’s fraud claims, the network was doing what any media organization would: reporting and commenting on a matter of undeniable newsworthiness. And it noted that many of its programs did not endorse the claim that the election was stolen.“In its coverage, Fox News fulfilled its commitment to inform fully and comment fairly,” its brief said. “Some hosts viewed the president’s claims skeptically; others viewed them hopefully; all recognized them as profoundly newsworthy.”The law shields journalists from liability if they report on false statements, but not if they promote them.Dominion said in its filing that not a single Fox witness had testified that he or she believed any of the allegations about Dominion.In a statement on Thursday, a Fox spokeswoman said, “Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”The brief shows that Fox News stars and executives were afraid of losing their audience, which started to defect to the conservative cable news alternatives Newsmax and OAN after Fox News called Arizona for Mr. Biden. And they seemed concerned with the impact that would have on the network’s profitability. On Nov. 12, in a text chain with Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Hannity, Mr. Carlson pointed to a tweet in which a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, fact-checked a tweet from Mr. Trump referring to Fox broadcasts and said there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion.“Please get her fired,” Mr. Carlson said. He added: “It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” Ms. Heinrich had deleted her tweet by the next morning.The details offer more than dramatic vignettes from inside a news organization where internal disputes rarely spill into public view. They are pieces of evidence that a jury could use to weigh whether to find Fox liable for significant financial damages. Dominion is asking for $1.6 billion as compensation for the damage it says it suffered as Fox guests and hosts claimed, for instance, that Dominion’s voting machines had been designed to rig elections for the Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez and were equipped with an algorithm that could erase votes from one candidate and give them to another.Fox Corporation has about $4 billion cash on hand, according to its latest quarterly earnings report.The burden in the case falls on Dominion to prove that Fox acted with actual malice — the longstanding legal standard that requires Dominion to prove that either Fox guests, hosts and executives knew what was being said on the air was false and allowed it anyway, or that people inside Fox were recklessly negligent in failing to check the accuracy of their coverage.That burden is difficult to meet, which is why defamation cases often fail. But legal experts said Dominion’s arguments were stronger than most.“This filing argues a fire hose of direct evidence of knowing falsity,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. “It gives a powerful preview of one of the best-supported claims of actual malice we have seen in any major-media case.”Many defamation suits are quickly dismissed because of the First Amendment’s broad free speech protections. If they do go forward, they are usually settled out of court to spare both sides the costly spectacle of a trial. The Dominion case has proceeded with a speed and scope that media experts have said is unusual.For eight months, Dominion lawyers have taken depositions from dozens of people at all levels of the network and its parent company. Mr. Murdoch was deposed last month. (Dominion’s brief was written before that deposition and does not reflect its contents, which remain under seal.) Mr. Hannity, one of the most popular prime-time hosts and a close Trump ally, has been deposed twice. And the personal phones and emails of many midlevel employees have been searched as part of the discovery process, which people inside the company have said has created an atmosphere of considerable unease.Both sides appear dug in and confident of victory. The judge has scheduled jury selection to begin in mid-April.Fox has contested how Dominion arrived at the amount it is seeking in damages, arguing that the company has vastly overstated its valuation and the reputational harm it suffered.In papers filed with the court on Thursday, lawyers for Fox called the $1.6 billion sum “a staggering figure that has no factual support and serves no apparent purpose other than to generate headlines, chill First Amendment-protected speech.”Fox’s lawyers added that Staple Street Capital Partners, the private equity firm that owns a majority share in Dominion, had paid about $38 million for its 76 percent stake in the company in 2018 and had never estimated Dominion’s financial value to be worth “anywhere near $1.6 billion.” Fox has made a counterclaim against Dominion seeking to recover all its costs associated with the lawsuit.Dominion’s goal, aside from convincing a jury that Fox knowingly spread lies, is to build a case that points straight to the top of the Fox media empire and its founding family, the Murdochs.“Fox knew,” the Dominion filing declares. “From the top down, Fox knew.”The brief cites senior executives and editors responsible for shaping Fox’s coverage behind the scenes who weren’t buying the election denial, either.“No reasonable person would have thought that,” said the network’s politics editor at the time, Chris Stirewalt, referring to the allegation that Dominion rigged the election. Bill Sammon, Fox’s managing editor in Washington, is quoted as saying, “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”Fox pushed out both journalists after the 2020 election.Ron Mitchell, a senior Fox executive who oversaw the Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham shows, texted privately with colleagues that the Dominion allegations were “the Bill Gates/microchip angle to voter fraud,” referring to false claims that microchips were injected into people who received Covid-19 vaccines.At times, Fox employees are described as disparaging one another. The president of the network, Jay Wallace, is quoted at one point criticizing the former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs — one of the biggest megaphones for Mr. Trump’s lies. “The North Koreans do a more nuanced show” than Mr. Dobbs, the brief says.On Nov. 6, 2020, three days after Election Day, as Mr. Biden pulled into the lead, Mr. Murdoch told Ms. Scott in an email that it was going to be “very hard to credibly cry foul everywhere,” and noted that “if Trump becomes a sore loser, we should watch Sean especially,” referring to Mr. Hannity. More

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      The Times Asks Judge to Unseal Documents in Fox News Defamation Case

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      Most of the evidence in the case has remained under seal at the request of Fox’s lawyers.The New York Times asked a judge on Wednesday to unseal some legal filings that contain previously undisclosed evidence in a defamation suit brought against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, a company targeted with conspiracy theories about rigged machines and stolen votes in the 2020 election.Most of the evidence in the case — including text messages and emails taken from the personal phones of Fox executives, on-air personalities and producers in the weeks after the election — has remained under seal at the request of lawyers for the network.Federal law and the law in Delaware, where the case is being heard, broadly protect the public’s right of access to information about judicial proceedings. The law allows for exceptions if a party in a lawsuit can show good cause to keep something under seal, such as a company seeking to protect a trade secret or financial information.The judge in the case, Eric M. Davis, has cautioned that neither Fox nor Dominion was entitled to keep information secret for reasons not covered by those limited exceptions, including, he said last month, the fact that something “may be embarrassing.”Dominion filed the lawsuit in early 2021, arguing that “Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes.” It is asking for $1.6 billion in damages from the network and its parent company, Fox Corporation.Fox has defended itself by claiming that the commentary of its hosts and guests was protected under the First Amendment, and that the allegations of fraud made by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies were inherently newsworthy, even if they were false.The Times argued that the law tilts heavily toward the public’s right to access even if it also allows for limited exceptions. The Times is being joined by National Public Radio in its request to make public hundreds of pages of documents filed under seal this month by Fox and Dominion.Dominion’s suit, The Times said in its filing with Judge Davis, “is unquestionably a consequential defamation case that tests the scope of the First Amendment.”Further, the complaint said, the suit “undeniably involves a matter of profound public interest: namely, how a broadcast network fact-checked and presented to the public the allegations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that plaintiff was to blame.”David McCraw, The Times’s deputy general counsel, said in a statement: “The public has a right to transparent judicial proceedings to ensure that the law is being applied fairly. That is especially important in a case that touches upon political issues that have deeply divided the country.”Judge Davis has scheduled a trial for April. More

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      Hannity and Other Fox Employees Said They Doubted Trump’s Fraud Claims

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      On Wednesday, lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems shared some of the strongest evidence yet that some Fox employees knew what they broadcast about the claims was false.On Nov. 30, 2020, Sean Hannity hosted Sidney Powell on his prime-time Fox News program. As she had in many other interviews around that time — on Fox and elsewhere in right-wing media — Ms. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, spun wild conspiracy theories about what she said was “corruption all across the country, in countless districts,” in a plot to steal re-election from the president, Donald J. Trump.At the center of this imagined plot were machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which Ms. Powell claimed ran an algorithm that switched votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Dominion machines, she insisted, were being used “to trash large batches of votes.”Mr. Hannity interrupted her with a gentle question that had been circulating among election deniers, despite a lack of supporting proof: Why were Democrats silencing whistle-blowers who could prove this fraud?Did Mr. Hannity believe any of this?“I did not believe it for one second.”That was the answer Mr. Hannity gave, under oath, in a deposition in Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, according to information disclosed in a court hearing on Wednesday. The hearing was called to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial, which the judge has scheduled to begin in April.Mr. Hannity’s disclosure — along with others that emerged from court on Wednesday about what Fox News executives and hosts really believed as their network became one of the loudest megaphones for lies about the 2020 election — is among the strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.More on Fox NewsDefamation Case: ​​Some of the biggest names at Fox News are being questioned in the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. The suit could be one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.Exploring a Merger: Fox and News Corp, the two sides of Rupert Murdoch’s media business, are weighing a proposal that could put Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the Fox broadcasting network under the same corporate umbrella.‘American Nationalist’: Tucker Carlson stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, the TV host transformed Fox News and became former President Donald J. Trump’s heir.Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.The high legal standard of proof in defamation cases makes it difficult for a company like Dominion to prevail against a media organization like Fox News. Dominion has to persuade a jury that people at Fox were, in effect, saying one thing in private while telling their audience exactly the opposite. And that requires showing a jury convincing evidence that speaks to the state of mind of those who were making the decisions at the network.In Delaware Superior Court on Wednesday, Dominion’s lawyers argued that they had obtained ample evidence to make that case.One lawyer for Dominion said that “not a single Fox witness” so far had produced anything supporting the various false claims about the company that were uttered repeatedly on the network. And in some cases, other high-profile hosts and senior executives echoed Mr. Hannity’s doubts about what Mr. Trump and his allies like Ms. Powell were saying, according to the Dominion lawyer, Stephen Shackelford.This included Meade Cooper, who oversees prime-time programming for Fox News, and the prime-time star Tucker Carlson, Mr. Shackelford said.“Many of the highest-ranking Fox people have admitted under oath that they never believed the Dominion lies,” he said, naming both Ms. Cooper and Mr. Carlson.Mr. Shackelford described how Mr. Carlson had “tried to squirm out of it at his deposition” when asked about what he really believed.Mr. Shackelford started to elaborate about what Mr. Carlson had said privately, telling the judge about the existence of text messages the host had sent in November and December of 2020. But the judge, Eric M. Davis, cut him off, leaving the specific contents of those texts unknown.A spokeswoman for Fox News had no immediate comment.Another previously unknown detail emerged on Wednesday about what was going on inside the Fox universe in those frantic weeks after the election. A second lawyer representing Dominion, Justin Nelson, told Judge Davis about evidence obtained by Dominion showing that an employee of the Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, had tried to intervene with the White House to stop Ms. Powell. According to Mr. Nelson, that employee called the fraud claims “outlandish” and pressed Mr. Trump’s staff to get rid of Ms. Powell, who was advising the president on filing legal challenges to the results.Mr. Nelson said that evidence cut straight to the heart of whether the Fox Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, was also liable for defamation. Judge Davis ruled in June that Dominion could sue the larger, highly profitable corporation, which includes the Fox network on basic television and a lucrative sports broadcasting division.A spokesman for the Fox Corporation had no immediate comment.Over the last several months, Dominion has been combing through mountains of private email and text messages from people at every level of Fox News and the Fox Corporation — hosts like Mr. Hannity, senior executives and midlevel producers. A lawyer for Fox, Dan K. Webb, said on Wednesday that the company had produced more than 52,000 documents for Dominion, with more to come.During the hearing, the judge was asked to rule on several issues. One was whether a second voting company that is suing Fox for defamation, Smartmatic, could be given access to the documents Dominion had obtained for its case. Judge Davis ruled in Fox’s favor, denying Smartmatic’s motion.A second issue was whether certain evidence that Dominion has used against Fox in its court filings — including emails among Fox employees and a page from a deposition in which someone from Fox describes the journalistic processes of one of the network’s programs — should be made public.Throughout the case, Fox has asked the court to keep almost everything in the case pertaining to its inner workings under seal. A third lawyer for Dominion, Davida Brook, argued on Wednesday that the public had a fundamental right to see what it had filed with the court in the interest of fostering the openness that a democracy requires.Judge Davis disagreed, ruling that the evidence would stay under seal. But he admonished the lawyers that neither party in the case should be overly aggressive in trying to keep facts in the case confidential.If, for instance, someone says something “not bright” — and therefore embarrassing — that wouldn’t be enough to keep that information under seal, Judge Davis said.“That’s too bad,” he said. More

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      Scott Stringer Sues for Defamation Over Sexual Assault Claim

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      Mr. Stringer, the former New York City comptroller, said that a woman’s claims of sexual assault were lies and caused “irreparable harm” as he ran for mayor.Nearly 20 months after allegations of unwanted sexual advances derailed his campaign for New York City mayor, Scott M. Stringer sued one of his accusers for defamation on Monday, arguing that she smeared his reputation with falsehoods and misrepresentations.In a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Stringer said that the woman, Jean Kim, had done “irreparable harm to him and his political future” by portraying what he called an “on-and-off” consensual relationship as predatory. He demanded that Ms. Kim retract her accusations and pay damages.“These defamatory statements have caused Mr. Stringer emotional pain and suffering, as well as injury to his reputation, honor and dignity,” lawyers for Mr. Stinger, a longtime Democratic politician and former New York City comptroller, wrote in the 12-page complaint.The legal action appears to be a calculated risk for Mr. Stringer, 62. If successful, it could help clear up his public image as he contemplates a political comeback. But it also serves to resurface Ms. Kim’s decades-old claims of misconduct, while posing the risk of an embarrassing legal defeat and reopening scrutiny into an earlier chapter in his life.Defamation cases are notoriously hard to prove, especially for public figures. To even get his case heard in court, Mr. Stringer must get around New York’s statute of limitations for defamation, and his lawyers are relying on a relatively novel legal theory to do so.They wrote in the suit that the matter was reopened legally in August 2022, when they assert — with scant detail — that Ms. Kim caused Representative Carolyn Maloney to resurface her defamatory statement against Mr. Stringer.The factual and legal issues are particularly relevant at a moment when New York and the country are still grappling with balancing the claims of women propelled by the #MeToo movement against the right to due process, and appraising what should happen to public figures like Mr. Stringer who are accused of misconduct decades after the fact.Ms. Kim and a lawyer who had represented her during the mayoral campaign did not comment on Monday morning, after the suit was filed.In an interview on Friday, Mr. Stringer said that he decided to take legal action now, after a needed “cooling-off period” for his family, to salvage his reputation. He acknowledged that waiting so long after the initial statements may have constrained his options legally.“There are times you could just walk away,” Mr. Stringer said. “But it was a lie. It was just a total lie. And I can’t live with myself if I did not do everything in my power to expose it.”Ms. Kim came forward in April 2021, in the heat of the Democratic primary for mayor. At the time, Mr. Stringer, a liberal who had slowly risen through the ranks of city politics, was considered a top-tier candidate for the nomination, though he seldom led early public polls.In a news conference and media interviews, Ms. Kim said that Mr. Stringer sexually assaulted her in 2001 when she was working as an unpaid intern on his unsuccessful campaign for public advocate. She said Mr. Stringer, then a state assemblyman whom she viewed as an older mentor figure, repeatedly groped her without consent, put his hands down the back of her pants, pressured her to have sex — and then warned her not to tell anyone.“He constantly reminded me of his power by saying things like, ‘You want me to make a phone call for you to change your life,’ ‘You want me to make you the first Asian district leader,’” Ms. Kim later told The New York Times. Many prominent supporters quickly backed away from his campaign. Mr. Stringer stayed in the race, but ultimately finished fifth in a primary election won by Eric Adams, who went on to become mayor.Mr. Stringer disputed Ms. Kim’s account, saying they were peers and that their relationship had been consensual and public within the tight circles of Upper West Side Democratic politics. His campaign also presented documents that showed that Ms. Kim, who has worked as a political lobbyist, might have helped one of Mr. Stringer’s rivals, Andrew Yang, which she disputed.Monday’s lawsuit largely repeats the conflicting stories without new evidence, and seeks to highlight factual errors or inconsistencies in Ms. Kim’s claims.It remains unclear if Ms. Kim’s version of events can be independently corroborated; she has not provided any records, nor has she mentioned associates with whom she discussed the allegations at the time.Defamation, particularly cases involving public figures like Mr. Stringer, can be difficult to prove, and the contradictory claims by Ms. Kim and Mr. Stringer — involving shifting sexual and romantic mores, political power and few hard pieces of evidence — only add to that burden.Mr. Stringer appears to have even more pressing legal burdens, with Ms. Kim likely to argue for dismissal because her original statements fall outside New York’s statute of limitations.His argument that the timeline was restarted in August rests on photos on social media that apparently show Ms. Kim at a campaign event with Ms. Maloney, who was running in a primary contest against Representative Jerrold Nadler, a longtime mentor of Mr. Stringer’s.Two weeks later, the congresswoman attacked Mr. Nadler in The New York Post for supporting “a man accused of sexual assault.” The lawsuit argues that it should have been “reasonably foreseeable” for Ms. Kim that Ms. Maloney would “republish” her claims after their meeting.Some allies of Mr. Stringer, left, believe he should be considered a potential heir to his mentor, Representative Jerrold Nadler, right, if he decides to retire.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesLegal experts briefed on the issues raised by the case, though, said that the application of the theory known as “republication” would be ripe for challenge on multiple grounds. Though the suit insinuates that Ms. Kim somehow prompted Ms. Maloney’s statement, Mr. Stringer’s lawyers never actually state what, if anything, she told the congresswoman to encourage or direct her to reference Mr. Stringer. “If there’s no clear evidence that the defendant directed the third party to make the statement, it’s fairly likely the case would be dismissed,” said Lee Levine, a retired media lawyer with decades of experience litigating defamation cases, including some for The Times.Though The Times reviewed a draft of the complaint before it was filed, it agreed with Mr. Stringer not to share details of the case with Mr. Levine or anyone else ahead of time.Mr. Stringer and his lawyers were clearly aware of the statutory limits. The suit filed on Monday made no mention of a second woman, Teresa Logan, who followed Ms. Kim’s allegations by accusing Mr. Stringer of kissing and groping her at a bar he helped found in the 1990s. That instance, Mr. Stringer conceded, was clearly outside the statute of limitations.Mr. Stringer said in 2021 that he had “no memory” of the woman but added that if they had met, he was sorry to have made her uncomfortable.If the case proceeds, Mr. Stringer and his allies believe the discovery process will turn up new and relevant information related to Ms. Kim’s actions and whether she coordinated her public statements with any of his political rivals.Mr. Stringer is represented in the suit by Milton L. Williams Jr., a former federal prosecutor and white-collar criminal defense lawyer who currently serves as the chair of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board.After his loss, Mr. Stringer finished out his term as comptroller last December and began a consulting practice. But he almost immediately began discussing a political comeback.He went as far as to briefly campaign for a State Senate seat in Manhattan this spring, but he never actually entered the race. Allies still believe he should be considered a potential heir to Mr. Nadler should the congressman decide to retire.Still, the accusations of misconduct would almost certainly complicate any effort to return to public office.“Right now, I don’t have any plans to run for office. It’s something I’m not ruling out someday,” Mr. Stringer said. “This lawsuit is what’s in front of me at the moment.” More

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      Defamation Suit Against Fox Grows More Contentious

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      Lachlan Murdoch is set to be deposed on Monday, the latest in a flurry of activity in the high-stakes case.Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of the Fox Corporation, is expected to be deposed on Monday as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News for amplifying bogus claims that rigged machines from Dominion Voting Systems were responsible for Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020.Mr. Murdoch will be the most senior corporate figure within the Fox media empire to face questions under oath in the case so far. And his appearance before Dominion’s lawyers is a sign of how unexpectedly far and fast the lawsuit has progressed in recent weeks — and how contentious it has become.Fox and Dominion have gone back and forth in Delaware state court since the summer in an escalating dispute over witnesses, evidence and testimony. The arguments point to the high stakes of the case, which will render a judgment on whether the most powerful conservative media outlet in the country intentionally misled its audience and helped seed one of the most pervasive lies in American politics.Although the law leans in the media’s favor in defamation cases, Dominion has what independent observers have said is an unusually strong case. Day after day, Fox hosts and guests repeated untrue stories about Dominion’s ties to communist regimes and far-fetched theories about how its software enabled enemies of the former president to steal his votes.“This is a very different kind of case,” said David A. Logan, dean of the Roger Williams School of Law, who has argued in favor of loosening some libel laws. “Rarely do cases turn on a weekslong pattern of inflammatory, provably false, but also oddly inconsistent statements.”Dominion, in its quest to obtain the private communications of as many low-, mid- and high-level Fox personnel as possible, hopes to prove that people inside the network knew they were disseminating lies. Fox hopes to be able sow doubt about that by showing how its hosts pressed Trump allies for evidence they never produced and that Dominion machines were vulnerable to hacking, even if no hacking took place.The judge, Eric M. Davis, has ruled in most instances in Dominion’s favor, allowing the voting company to expand the pool of potential evidence it can present to a jury to include text messages from the personal phones of Fox employees and the employment contracts of star hosts such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, along with those of Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, and her top corporate managers.More on Fox NewsDefamation Case: ​​Some of the biggest names at Fox News are being questioned in the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. The suit could be one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.Exploring a Merger: Fox and News Corp, the two sides of Rupert Murdoch’s media business, are weighing a proposal that could put Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the Fox broadcasting network under the same corporate umbrella.‘American Nationalist’: Tucker Carlson stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, the TV host transformed Fox News and became former President Donald J. Trump’s heir.Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.Dominion has conducted dozens of depositions with current and former network personalities, producers, business managers and executives. The people questioned come from the rungs of middle management at Fox News headquarters in Manhattan to the corner office in Century City, Los Angeles, where Mr. Murdoch oversees the Fox Corporation and its sprawling enterprise of conservative media outlets.The fight over depositions has intensified in recent weeks as lawyers for the two companies sparred over whether Mr. Hannity and another pro-Trump host, Jeanine Pirro, should have to sit for a second round of questioning about messages that Dominion obtained from their phones as part of the discovery process. Fox lawyers have argued that the hosts should not be compelled to testify again, citing the legal protections that journalists have against being forced to reveal confidential sources.The judge ruled that Dominion’s lawyers could question both Mr. Hannity and Ms. Pirro again but limited the scope of what they could ask. Ms. Pirro’s second deposition was late last month; Mr. Hannity’s has yet to be scheduled.Fox has accused Dominion in court filings of making “escalating demands” for documents that are voluminous in quantity, saying it would have to hire a second litigation team to accommodate such a “crushing burden.” (The judge has largely disagreed.)In a sign of the simmering tensions between the two sides, Fox lawyers have asked the court to impose tens of thousands of dollars in sanctions against Dominion. Fox has accused the voting machine company’s chief executive, John Poulos, and other senior company officials of failing to preserve their emails and text messages, as parties to a lawsuit are required to do with potentially relevant evidence.After Dominion filed its lawsuit in March 2021 — claiming that Fox’s coverage of its machines not only cost it hundreds of millions of dollars in business but “harmed the idea of credible elections” — many media law experts assumed this case would end like many other high-profile defamation case against a news organization: with a settlement.Fox News has a history of settling sensitive lawsuits before they reach a jury. In the last several years alone, it has paid tens of millions of dollars in claims: to women who reported sexual harassment by its former chief executive, Roger Ailes, and by prominent hosts including Bill O’Reilly; as well as to the family of Seth Rich, a former Democratic Party staff member who was killed in a robbery that some conservatives tried to link to an anti-Clinton conspiracy theory.But a settlement with Dominion appears to be a remote possibility at this point. Fox has said that the broad protections provided to the media under the First Amendment shield it from liability. The network says it was merely reporting on Mr. Trump’s accusations, which are protected speech even if the president is lying. Dominion’s complaint outlines examples in which Fox hosts did more than just report those false claims, they endorsed them.“This does not appear to be a case that’s going to settle — but anything can happen,” said Dan K. Webb, a noted trial lawyer who is representing Fox in the dispute. “There are some very fundamental First Amendment issues here, and those haven’t changed.”In a statement, Dominion said the company was confident its case would show that Fox knew it was spreading lies “from the highest levels down.”“Instead of acting responsibly and showing remorse, Fox instead has doubled down,” the statement said. “We’re focused on holding Fox accountable and are confident the truth will ultimately prevail.”The judge has set a trial date for April of next year. A separate defamation suit against Fox by the voting company Smartmatic is not scheduled to be ready for trial until the summer of 2024.Part of the reason Fox executives and its lawyers believe they can prevail is the high burden of proof Dominion must reach to convince a jury that the network’s coverage of the 2020 election defamed it. Under the law, a jury has to conclude that Fox acted with “actual malice,” meaning that people inside the network knew that what they were reporting was false but did so anyway, or that they recklessly disregarded information showing what they were reporting was wrong.That is what Dominion hopes to show the jury with the private messages it obtained from a several-week period after the election from Fox employees at all levels of the company. Very little is known publicly about what those messages could contain.In addition to arguing that its coverage of Dominion was protected as free speech, Fox argues it was merely covering statements from newsmakers. “There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the United States and his lawyers making allegations of voter fraud,” a spokeswoman said.Fox’s lawyers are also planning lines of defense that they hope will dent Dominion’s credibility, even if that means leaning into some of the conspiracy theories that are at the heart of Dominion’s case. They may argue, for example, that it was plausible that the machines had been hacked, pointing to questions that were raised by at least one independent expert about whether the software was secure.As part of their fact-finding, Fox lawyers sought information from a University of Michigan computer scientist who wrote a report this year saying there were vulnerabilities in Dominion’s system that could be exploited, even though there is no evidence of any such breach.Mr. Webb said the intent would be to show that the fraud allegations “were not made up out of whole cloth.” But it was not his plan, he said, to pretend that Mr. Trump’s voter fraud falsehoods — which were the same as many of the falsehoods uttered on the air at Fox — were true. “The president’s allegations were not correct,” Mr. Webb said. He added that he planned “to show the jury that those security concerns were there and were real and added plausibility to the president’s allegations.”After Mr. Murdoch’s deposition on Monday, lawyers on both sides of the case said they expected one additional senior executive to be questioned by Dominion’s lawyers: Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the Fox Corporation, who founded Fox News with Mr. Ailes more than 25 years ago. More

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      College Athletes and Ideals for Women’s Body Image

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      More from our inbox:Elizabeth Warren’s Election Analysis: We DisagreeEric Adams and the MidtermsSue Republican LiarsA Matter of SpaceAudra Koopman, who ran track and field at Penn State, said she felt pressured to avoid sweets and to trim down. But even as she did, she didn’t feel like she performed better.Rachel Woolf for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Women in College Sports Feel Pressure to Be Lean at Any Cost” (Sports, Nov. 14):Thank you for raising awareness about the risks of scrutinizing body composition in college athletes. I am a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders, and the highlighted profiles echo stories I have heard many times over.No evidence suggests that participating in a sport causes eating disorders, but rates of these illnesses among athletes are higher than the national average. Athletes who participate in endurance, weight-class or aesthetic-based sports are at heightened risk.A focus on metrics like body fat percentage and body weight may breed an unhelpful hypervigilance on restrictive eating, body size and burning calories. College-age men and women are often still maturing physically, and by taking drastic measures to change their bodies risk their physical and psychological well-being.They also risk missing out on the greatest pleasures of sports: being a good teammate and finding joy in competition even while competing at a high personal level.Deborah R. GlasoferNew YorkThe writer is an associate professor of clinical medical psychology, Columbia Center for Eating Disorders, New York State Psychiatric Institute.To the Editor:Women in college sports are simply the tip of the spear when it comes to our affluent culture’s widely promoted ideal of thinness for women. I lived in Nigeria for many years, and there plumpness in a woman is seen as a desirable signifier of affluence. So this ideal for women’s bodies is anything but universal or timeless.Athletes and dancers perform in public, and the moves that make up their routines are easier when there is less body fat to contend with.This fact extends into other areas of daily life. But though men perform these activities too, and can also have eating disorders, the fact that women are the focal point of this discussion, as they were when I was a professor of women’s studies at Rutgers, says something about the larger issue of gender ideals in our culture.Katherine EllisNew YorkElizabeth Warren’s Election Analysis: We Disagree Kenny Holston for The New York TimesTo the Editor:In “Democrats, Let’s Seize This Moment” (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 14), Senator Elizabeth Warren claims, “The so-called experts who called Democrats’ messaging incoherent were just plain wrong — and candidates who ignored their advice won.”I beg to differ. Surveys show that a large majority of Americans favor most Democratic policies — legal access to abortion, a fair and progressive tax structure, strong environmental regulations and worker protection, a reasonable minimum wage, not cutting Social Security or Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. Yet many Democratic candidates barely squeaked by, and the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives.It’s easy to know what Republicans stand for — even if it’s based on lies. It’s all over the media. I’m not sure that most Americans can say what Democrats stand for, although a large minority of Americans seem to think that we steal elections, and want to curtail the police, open the borders and hand out large sums of money to people who refuse to work. Why? Because the Republican message (often lies) is getting through.Democratic politicians may have great ideas, but they’re terrible at communicating them. Otherwise they’d have a much bigger majority in government.Shaun BreidbartPelham, N.Y.To the Editor:Democrats squeaking by in the midterms is not an overwhelming endorsement of President Biden’s spending and other policies. In many cases it’s voting for the least worst candidate.Has Elizabeth Warren not seen the polls about dissatisfaction with both former President Donald Trump and President Biden? If “none of the above” were a choice, it would likely have won on many ballots.As a centrist, I want elected officials to stop talking and writing about how great they are and how bad their opposition is. Rather, focus on what you will accomplish, bipartisan cooperation and problem solving.Many of my moderate Democratic friends would vote for Liz Cheney if she were a presidential candidate. Sure, she is more conservative, but she has demonstrated integrity, bipartisanship and intelligence. That would be a refreshing change.Gail MacLeodLexington, Va.Eric Adams and the MidtermsMayor Eric Adams views the Democrats’ poor performance in New York as validation of his messaging about crime and his brand of moderate politics.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Democrats See Adams at Root of State Losses” (front page, Nov. 18):Mayor Eric Adams did not lose four New York congressional seats. Asserting that he is to blame says, in essence, that the majority of voters who elected Republicans in swing districts chose poorly and that if voters had not been told crime was a problem, the Democratic candidates in those districts would have won.Mr. Adams has identified crime as a priority for his administration. By virtue of winning election, he is entitled to set his agenda. Whether the current increase in crime is a surge or a blip can be debated, certainly, but the idea that he should soft-pedal concerns about public safety to help other Democratic candidates is inappropriate.On the other hand, the fact that Republicans exploited perceptions about crime for electoral gain may be deplorable, but it is well within the rules of the game.The Democrats’ loss of New York congressional seats resulted from hubris around redistricting and willful ignorance about public perception of issues like bail reform. Eric Adams had nothing to do with either.Rob AbbotCroton-on-Hudson, N.Y.Sue Republican LiarsTo the Editor:Re “Misinformation on Pelosi Attack Spread by G.O.P.” (front page, Nov. 6):The notion seems firmly rooted among Democratic political leaders that since politics is rough and tumble, they should rise above it when the G.O.P.’s fabrication machine spews ominous conspiracy theories and baseless slurs to obscure reality.But since Republican politicians aren’t restrained by shame, common decency or respect for the truth, tolerating their falsehoods only encourages the right wing to wallow in fact-free filth. Instead, the victims of right-wing slanders owe it to themselves — and to us — to seek money damages for defamation from reckless Republican liars.First Amendment law protects scorching invective. But there’s a limit. Under the constitutional principles that govern defamation law, a political speaker is not free to knowingly utter falsehoods or to speak with reckless indifference to truth or falsity.That principle plainly applies to unfounded Republican claims about Paul Pelosi. It likewise applies to Newt Gingrich’s assertion that John Fetterman has “ties to the crips gang,” and to Donald Trump’s lies about a voting machine maker.Multimillion-dollar damage awards might deter Republicans from fouling the political landscape with lies designed to conceal their lack of answers to America’s problems.Mitchell ZimmermanPalo Alto, Calif.The writer is an attorney.A Matter of Space Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Dimming Hope Office Buildings Will Ever Refill” (front page, Nov. 18):Not enough housing? Too much office space? Go figure.Deborah BayerRichmond, Calif. More

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      Trump Files a Defamation Suit Against CNN

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      The former president has a history of threatening, and occasionally filing, lawsuits against media organizations whose coverage he deems unfair.Former President Donald J. Trump sued CNN on Monday, claiming that the network defamed him and demanding $475 million in damages.Over the course of his business and political career, Mr. Trump has frequently threatened to sue media organizations over news coverage that he deems unfair or disrespectful. Although he rarely followed through, his attacks on the media became a staple of his political messaging and have often been cited in fund-raising entreaties in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections.In 2020, his re-election campaign sued The New York Times and The Washington Post over opinion articles that linked Mr. Trump to Russian interference in American elections. His suit against The Times was dismissed; the suit involving The Post is pending.Mr. Trump’s complaint against CNN was filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The lawsuit alleges a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander” that, Mr. Trump asserts, has recently escalated “as CNN fears the plaintiff will run for president in 2024.”The 29-page suit cites numerous times when CNN hosts and guests criticized Mr. Trump over his policies and his questioning of the 2020 presidential election result. It also laments that some guests have invoked Adolf Hitler and the history of Nazi Germany in criticizing Mr. Trump’s behavior. Among the on-air guests cited as having defamed Mr. Trump is the singer Linda Ronstadt.A CNN spokesman declined to comment.A footnote in the lawsuit shows that Mr. Trump’s representatives contacted CNN in July to give notice of prospective litigation and request that the network stop referring to Mr. Trump’s comments about the 2020 election as “lies.” According to the suit, CNN declined Mr. Trump’s request and replied, “You have not identified a single false or defamatory statement in your letter.”In 2019, Mr. Trump threatened CNN with a lawsuit over “unethical and unlawful attacks.” CNN called that threat “a desperate P.R. stunt.” A suit never materialized.In Monday’s suit, Mr. Trump’s lawyers justified their demand for $475 million in damages in part by alleging that CNN’s coverage has caused the former president to suffer “embarrassment, pain, humiliation and mental anguish.” More

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      Sean Hannity and Other Fox Stars Face Depositions in Defamation Suit

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      The depositions are one of the clearest indications yet of how aggressively Dominion Voting Systems is moving forward with its suit against the media company.Some of the biggest names at Fox News have been questioned, or are scheduled to be questioned in the coming days, by lawyers representing Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6 billion defamation suit against the network, as the election technology company presses ahead with a case that First Amendment scholars say is extraordinary in its scope and significance.Sean Hannity became the latest Fox star to be called for a deposition by Dominion’s legal team, according to a new filing in Delaware Superior Court. He is scheduled to appear on Wednesday.Tucker Carlson is set to face questioning on Friday. Lou Dobbs, whose Fox Business show was canceled last year, is scheduled to appear on Tuesday. Others who have been deposed recently include Jeanine Pirro, Steve Doocy and a number of high-level Fox producers, court records show.People with knowledge of the case, who would speak only anonymously, said they expected that the chief executive of Fox News Media, Suzanne Scott, could be one of the next to be deposed, along with the president of Fox News, Jay Wallace. Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, whose family owns Fox, could follow in the coming weeks.The depositions are among the clearest indications yet of how aggressively Dominion is moving forward with its suit, which is set to go to trial early next year, and of the legal pressure building on the nation’s most powerful conservative media company. There have been no moves from either side to discuss a possible settlement, people with knowledge of the case have said.More Coverage of Fox News‘American Nationalist’: Tucker Carlson stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, the TV host transformed Fox News and became former President Donald J. Trump’s heir.Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.Defamation Case: ​​Legal scholars say that the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network could be one of the most consequential First Amendment cases in a generation.How Russia Uses Fox News: The network has appeared in Russian media as a way to bolster the Kremlin’s narrative about the Ukraine war.It is common for large media companies like Fox to settle such cases well before they reach the point where journalists or senior executives are forced to sit for questioning by lawyers from the opposing side. But both Dominion and Fox appear to be preparing for the likelihood that the case will end up in front of a jury.The suit accuses Fox of pushing false and far-fetched claims of voter fraud to lure back viewers who had defected to other right-wing news sources. In its initial complaint, Dominion’s lawyers framed their lawsuit as a matter of profound civic importance. “The truth matters,” they said, adding, “Lies have consequences.”The judge overseeing the case allowed Dominion in late June to expand the suit to include the cable news network’s parent company, Fox Corporation, potentially broadening the legal exposure of both Murdochs. Shortly after, Fox replaced its outside counsel on the case and hired one of the nation’s most prominent trial lawyers, Dan Webb.A spokesman for Fox Corporation has said that the First Amendment protected the company from the suit, and that any attempt by Dominion lawyers to put the Murdochs at the center of their case would be a “fruitless fishing expedition.”Both Dominion and Fox appear to be preparing for the case to go before a jury.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesThe network is “confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected,” a Fox News spokeswoman said in a statement. She added that the $1.6 billion in damages that Dominion is seeking are “outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis.” According to court filings, Dominion estimates business losses at hundreds of millions of dollars and values the company at around $1 billion.Dominion’s legal complaint lays out how Fox repeatedly aired conspiracy theories about the company’s purported role in a plot to steal votes from former President Donald J. Trump, and argues that its business has suffered considerably as a result. Those falsehoods — including that Dominion was a pawn of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and that its machines were designed with a feature that allowed votes to be flipped from one candidate to another — aired night after night as Fox hosts like Mr. Hannity and Mr. Dobbs allowed guests to make them on their shows, and in some cases vouched for them.Legal experts say the case is one of the most potentially consequential libel suits brought against an American media company in more than a generation, with the potential to deliver a judgment on a falsehood that has damaged the integrity of the country’s democratic system and remains an article of faith among many Trump supporters.Defamation is extremely difficult to prove in a case like this because of the broad constitutional protections that cover the news media. A company like Dominion has to prove either that a media outlet knew what it was publishing or broadcasting was false, or that it acted so hastily it overlooked facts proving that falsity, a legal standard known as demonstrating a “reckless disregard for the truth.”Dominion’s legal strategy, which it has detailed in court filings, hinges on getting testimony and unearthing private communications between Fox employees that prove either such recklessness or knowledge that the statements were false.The case has stirred considerable unease inside Fox all summer, as employees have had to turn over months of emails and text messages to Dominion lawyers and prepare for depositions. Other current and former Fox personalities who have been deposed include Dana Perino, Shepard Smith and Chris Stirewalt, who was part of the team that made the election night projection that Mr. Trump would lose Arizona, and the presidency as a result.This is not the first time that Mr. Hannity has been in the middle of a high-profile defamation suit. In 2018, Fox was sued by the parents of Seth Rich, a former Democratic National Committee staff member whom Mr. Hannity and others at Fox falsely linked to a hacking that resulted in committee emails being published by WikiLeaks. Mr. Rich was murdered in an apparent botched robbery in 2017, though conspiracy theorists tried to blame his death on Democratic operatives. Fox News later retracted some of its reporting on the story, saying it did not meet the network’s editorial standards.Fox settled the Rich case in the fall of 2020, before Mr. Hannity could be deposed. More