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      Fox News Settles Defamation Case With Venezuelan Businessman

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      In a letter to a New York judge, the parties said they had reached a settlement in a case related to claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, but did not disclose the terms.Fox News and one of its former hosts, Lou Dobbs, have settled a defamation suit with a Venezuelan businessman whom the network linked to voting-system fraud in the 2020 election.In a letter filed on Saturday to a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, the parties said they had reached a confidential settlement, although they did not disclose the terms.“This matter has been resolved amicably by both sides,” a spokesperson for Fox News said in an email. “We have no further comment.”The settlement comes days before jury selection this week in a major case that Fox News is defending. That case, a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, says that Fox News lied about voter fraud in the 2020 election, and that Fox hosts and guests repeatedly made false claims about Dominion machines and their supposed role in a plot to steal the election from President Donald J. Trump in 2020.In that trial, which is expected to begin on April 17, a jury will weigh whether Fox spread false claims about Dominion while knowing that the claims were untrue, and it will determine any damages.“Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall,” the Fox spokesperson said.In the case of the Venezuelan businessman, Majed Khalil, Mr. Dobbs and Sidney Powell, a regular guest on Fox News, said on-air and in related Twitter posts that Dominion was using software to flip votes from President Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr., or to add votes for Mr. Biden.One of the tweets falsely said Mr. Khalil was “the effective ‘COO’ of the election project.” In an earlier complaint, the plaintiffs said neither Fox News nor Mr. Dobbs had reached out to Mr. Khalil for comment.Fox Business canceled Mr. Dobbs’s weekday show in February 2021. More

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      How Fox Chased Its Audience Down the Rabbit Hole

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      Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmOn the evening of Nov. 19, 2020, Rupert Murdoch was watching TV and crawling the walls of his 18th-century mansion in the British countryside while under strict pandemic lockdown. The television hosts at Murdoch’s top cable network, Fox News, might have scoffed at such unyielding adherence to Covid protocols. But Jerry Hall, his soon-to-be fourth ex-wife and no fan of Fox or its conservative hosts, was insisting that Murdoch, approaching his 90th birthday, remain cautious.The big story that day, as it had been every day in the two weeks since the election, was election theft, and now Rudolph W. Giuliani was giving a news conference at the Republican National Committee. With Sidney Powell, the right-wing attorney and conspiracy theorist, at his side, Giuliani, sweating profusely, black hair dye dripping down the side of his face, spun a wild fantasy about Joe Biden’s stealing the election from President Donald J. Trump. Dizzying in its delusional complexity, it centered on a supposed plot by the Clinton Foundation, George Soros and associates of Hugo Chávez to convert Trump votes into Biden votes by way of software from Smartmatic and voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems.Murdoch wasn’t pleased. He had built the most powerful media empire on the planet by understanding what his audience wanted and giving it to them without fear or judgment. But Trump now appeared to be making a serious bid to overturn a legitimate election, and his chaos agents — his personal lawyer Giuliani chief among them — were creating dangerous new appetites. Now Murdoch was faced with holding the line on reporting the facts or following his audience all the way into the land of conspiracy theories. Neither choice was necessarily good for business. At 5:01 p.m. London time, he sent an email to his friend Saad Mohseni — an Afghan Australian media mogul sometimes referred to as the Afghan Rupert Murdoch — from his iPhone. “Just watched Giuliani press conference,” he wrote. “Stupid and damaging.” Shortly after, he sent another email, this one to his Fox News chief executive, Suzanne Scott: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us, too.”Murdoch had for weeks — for years, really — avoided making a choice. Trump and his supporters were already furious at Fox News for being the first network to call Biden the victor in Arizona, and two newer cable networks were offering them a version of reality more fully on Trump’s terms. One of them, Newsmax, was moving up in the ratings while refusing to call Biden the winner. When Murdoch’s own paper, The Wall Street Journal, reported a few days before Giuliani’s news conference that Trump allies were considering pouring money into Newsmax to help it mount a stiffer challenge to Fox, Murdoch alerted Scott to the piece. Fox would have to play this just right, he said in an email. Take Giuliani with “a large grain of salt,” he wrote, but also be careful not to “antagonize Trump further.”The network’s coverage of the Giuliani news conference showed just how impossible this balancing act would be. Immediately afterward, a Fox News White House correspondent, Kristin Fisher, went to the network’s camera position outside the West Wing and fact-checked the allegations. “So much of what he said was simply not true,” she told Fox viewers. Giuliani, she said, provided no hard proof for a claim that “really cuts to the core of our democratic process.” Fox’s opinion hosts, who had been broadcasting the Giuliani-Powell Dominion fantasies to varying degrees themselves — some appearing to endorse them outright — had been complaining internally that the news division’s debunking efforts were alienating the core audience. An executive at the Fox Corporation, the network’s parent company, had recently started a brand protection effort to, among other tasks, “defend the brand in real time.” After Fisher’s segment, the group sent an alert to top news executives. In a follow-up email, Scott vented to a deputy. “I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories,” she wrote. “We have damaged their trust and belief in us.” One of Fisher’s bosses told her that she needed to do a better job of “respecting our audience,” and Fisher later complained of feeling sidelined. More

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      Attacks on Dominion Voting Persist Despite High-Profile Lawsuits

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      Unproven claims about Dominion Voting Systems still spread widely online.With a series of billion-dollar lawsuits, including a $1.6 billion case against Fox News headed to trial this month, Dominion Voting Systems sent a stark warning to anyone spreading falsehoods that the company’s technology contributed to fraud in the 2020 election: Be careful with your words, or you might pay the price.Not everyone is heeding the warning.“Dominion, why don’t you show us what’s inside your machines?” Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and prominent election denier, shouted during a livestream last month. He added that the company, which has filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him, was engaged in “the biggest cover-up for the biggest crime in United States history — probably in world history.”Claims that election software companies like Dominion helped orchestrate widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been widely debunked in the years since former President Donald J. Trump and his allies first pushed the theories. But far-right Americans on social media and influencers in the news media have continued in recent weeks and months to make unfounded assertions about the company and its electronic voting machines, pressuring government officials to scrap contracts with Dominion, sometimes successfully.The enduring attacks illustrate how Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims have taken root in the shared imagination of his supporters. And they reflect the daunting challenge that Dominion, and any other group that draws the attention of conspiracy theorists, faces in putting false claims to rest.The attacks about Dominion have not reached the fevered pitch of late 2020, when the company was cast as a central villain in an elaborate and fictitious voter fraud story. In that tale, the company swapped votes between candidates, injected fake ballots or allowed glaring security vulnerabilities to remain on voting machines.Dominion says all those claims have been made without proof to support them.“Nearly two years after the 2020 election, no credible evidence has ever been presented to any court or authority that voting machines did anything other than count votes accurately and reliably in all states,” Dominion said in an emailed statement.On Friday, the judge in Delaware overseeing the Fox defamation case ruled that it was “CRYSTAL clear” that Fox News and Fox Business had made false claims about the company — a major setback for the network.Many prominent influencers have avoided mentioning the company since Dominion started suing prominent conspiracy theorists in 2021. Fox News fired Lou Dobbs that year — only days after it was sued by Smartmatic, another election software company — saying the network was focusing on “new formats.” Mr. Dobbs is also a defendant in Dominion’s case against Fox, which is scheduled to go to trial on April 17.Yet there have been nearly nine million mentions of Dominion across social media websites, broadcasts and traditional media since Dominion filed its first lawsuit in January 2021, including nearly a million that have mentioned “fraud” or related conspiracy theories, according to Zignal Labs, a media monitoring company. Some of the most widely shared posts came from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who tweeted last month that the lawsuits were politically motivated, and Kari Lake, the former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona who has advanced voter fraud theories about election machines since her defeat last year.Far-right Americans on social media and influencers in the news media continue to make unfounded assertions about Dominion and its electronic voting machines.Brynn Anderson/Associated PressMr. Lindell remains one of the loudest voices pushing unproven claims against Dominion and electronic voting machines, posting hundreds of videos to Frank Speech, his news site, attacking the company with tales of voter fraud.Last month, Mr. Lindell celebrated on his livestream after Shasta County, a conservative stronghold in Northern California, voted to use paper ballots after ending its contract with Dominion. A county supervisor had flown to meet privately with Mr. Lindell before the vote, discussing how to run elections without voting machines, according to Mr. Lindell. The supervisor ultimately voted to switch to paper ballots.In an interview this week with The New York Times, Mr. Lindell claimed to have spent millions on campaigns to end election fraud, focusing on abolishing electronic voting systems and replacing them with paper ballots and hand counting.“I will never back down, ever, ever, ever,” he said in the interview. He added that Dominion’s lawsuit against him, which is continuing after the United States Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal, was “frivolous” and that the company was “guilty.”“They can’t deny it, nobody can deny it,” Mr. Lindell said.Joe Oltmann, the host of “Conservative Daily Podcast” and a promoter of voter fraud conspiracy theories, hosted an episode in late March titled “Dominion Is FINISHED,” in which he claimed that there was a “device that’s used in Dominion machines to actually transfer ballots,” offering only speculative support.“This changes everything,” Mr. Oltmann said.Dominion sent Mr. Oltmann a letter in 2020 demanding that he preserve documents related to his claims about the company, which is often the first step in a defamation lawsuit.In a livestream last month on Rumble, the streaming platform popular among right-wing influencers, Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was indicted on 10 charges related to allegations that she tampered with Dominion’s election equipment, devoted more than an hour to various election fraud claims, many of them featuring Dominion. The discussion included a suggestion that because boxes belonging to Dominion were stamped with “Made in China,” the election system was vulnerable to manipulation by the Chinese Communist Party.Mr. Oltmann and Ms. Peters did not respond to requests for comment.The Fox lawsuit has also added fuel to the conspiracy theory fire.Far-right news sites have largely ignored the finding that Fox News hosts disparaged voter fraud claims privately, even as they gave them significant airtime. Instead, the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site known for pushing voter fraud theories, focused on separate documents showing that Dominion executives “knew its voting systems had major security issues,” the site wrote.The documents showed the frenzied private messages between Dominion employees as they were troubleshooting problems, with one employee remarking, “our products suck.” In an email, a Dominion spokeswoman noted the remark was about a splash screen that was hiding an error message.In February, Mr. Trump shared the Gateway Pundit story on Truth Social, his right-wing social network, stoking a fresh wave of attacks against the company.“We will not be silent,” said one far-right influencer whose messages are sometimes shared by Mr. Trump on Truth Social. “Dominion is the enemy!” More

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      Trump Flourishes in the Glare of His Indictment

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      The former president’s appetite for attention has been fundamental to his identity for decades. Where others may focus on the hazards of a criminal case, he raises money, promotes his campaign and works to reduce the case to a cliffhanging spectacle.WASHINGTON — Since long before he entered the White House, former President Donald J. Trump has been an any-publicity-is-good-publicity kind of guy. In fact, he once told advisers, “There’s no bad press unless you’re a pedophile.” Hush money for a porn star? Evidently not an exception to that rule.And so, while no one wants to be indicted, Mr. Trump in one sense finds himself exactly where he loves to be — in the center ring of the circus, with all the spotlights on him. He has spent the days since a grand jury called him a potential criminal milking the moment for all it’s worth, savoring the attention as no one else in modern American politics would.He has blitzed out one fund-raising email after another with the kind of headlines other politicians would dread, like “BREAKING: PRESIDENT TRUMP INDICTED” and “RUMORED DETAILS OF MY ARREST” and “Yes I’ve been indicted, BUT” — the “but” being but you can still give him money. And when it turned out that they did give him money, a total of $4 million by his campaign’s count in the 24 hours following his indictment, he trumpeted that as loudly as he could too.Rather than hide from the indignity of turning himself into authorities this week, Mr. Trump obligingly sent out a schedule as if for a campaign tour, letting everyone know he would fly on Monday from Florida to New York, then on Tuesday surrender for mug shots, fingerprinting and arraignment. In case that were not enough to draw the eye, he plans to then fly back to Florida to make a prime-time evening statement at Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by the cameras and microphones he covets.Secret Service Agents stand outside of Mar-a-Lago last week. Donald Trump will fly on Monday from Florida to New York.Josh Ritchie for The New York TimesNever mind that any defense attorney worth the law degree would prefer he keep quiet; no one who knows Mr. Trump could reasonably expect that. He has already trashed the prosecutor (“degenerate psychopath”) and the judge in the case (“HATES ME”) and absent a court-issued gag order surely will continue to. His public comments could ultimately be used against him in a court of law, but to him that hardly seems like a reason to stay silent.“The trick, of course, is to take up all the air — demand all the attention, all the time, make everything, including his own indictment, into an opportunistic moment,” said Gwenda Blair, author of “The Trumps,” the definitive multigenerational biography of the former president’s family. So far, she added, he has done so “by combining exaggerated hyperbole with a claim to ultimate patriotism and religious zeal — quite the ultimate power package.”By treating the case as a spectacle, rather than a serious issue, he may discredit it, at least in the eyes of his own supporters. Rather than hang his head in shame, as many facing the possibility of prison might, he frames it as just another Trumpian drama in a life filled with them, the latest reality show cliffhanger — will he get off or will his enemies get him?But the ratings-obsessed star’s need for the limelight invariably will draw it away from other issues of major import. The United States is in the middle of a nuclear-edged clash with Russia in Ukraine and Moscow has just arrested an American reporter, provoking another hostage crisis. Taiwan’s president is visiting the United States at a moment of bristling tension with Beijing. Just Friday, America’s top general warned of the increasing convergence of a hostile Chinese-Russian-Iranian axis.The indictment comes “at the exact moment when our military and economic power is being profoundly challenged by our adversaries,” said Heather A. Conley, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington-based organization focused on trans-Atlantic relations. “From a national security perspective, we need to keep our eye on the ball. But unfortunately, our gaze on Tuesday will be on our own domestic turmoil.”For President Biden, who has assiduously avoided commenting on Mr. Trump’s legal travails, the first criminal prosecution of a former commander in chief will surely make it that much harder to generate interest in his dutiful speeches promoting the latest bridge project or other achievements he hopes to tout as he prepares to kick off a re-election campaign.In today’s sizzle-saturated media environment, White House officials understand perfectly well that an incumbent president doing his job can hardly compete for attention with a former president possibly doing time. Instead, they hope the electorate appreciates a leader who ignores the Sturm und Drang to focus on matters like the economy, health care and national security.Gerald Ford reading a proclamation granting former president Richard Nixon “a full, free and absolute pardon” for all “offenses against the United States” during the period of his presidency.Associated PressIn some ways, Mr. Biden faces the challenge that President Gerald R. Ford did when he decided to pardon his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, in the Watergate scandal. One of Mr. Ford’s advisers asked the Watergate prosecutor how long it would take to bring Mr. Nixon to trial if he were indicted and was told as long as a year. To Mr. Ford, it seemed too costly to have the country absorbed by a former president in the dock for so long.But those were different times and different presidents. Mr. Nixon had resigned in disgrace, his party had abandoned him and he grudgingly offered a measure of contrition when pardoned, even if not nearly enough for many. There was a sense of a chapter closing. Mr. Trump feels anything but contrite and, instead of sliding into exile, is mounting a comeback campaign with the support of many in his party..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Biden vowed long ago not to pardon Mr. Trump and could not do so anyway in a state case like the one in New York or the election case being investigated in Georgia; moreover, it remains unthinkable at this point that he would entertain the notion in the two federal inquiries still underway.While Mr. Ford sought national healing and Mr. Nixon effectively accepted the point, Mr. Trump feeds division. Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the danger now is a “partisan overhang” that makes it even more difficult for the parties to come together on important issues like raising the debt ceiling.“Things were already extremely partisan and polarized, particularly with the House, and I think this just exacerbates it and everything now will take on even more of a tinge,” he said. “It might increase the odds that House committees go after the president and his family or other members of his administration.”It is possible, of course, that America has seen so much Trump dramaturgy over the years that this has become the new normal and it may not upend the political system as much as might be expected. So far, at least, the indictment has not resulted in the sort of mass demonstrations Mr. Trump seemed to be calling for.If there is no other indictment, and this case devolves into the usual series of motions and hearings and other preliminary skirmishes, it may not be as captivating until a trial actually opens, which could be months away. And if that is the case, some of Washington’s old hands say, Mr. Biden and Congress could still focus on the business at hand.“As much as Trump and his team are going to try and make everything all about him, I believe that there is still enough of a governing coalition on the Hill that members will manage to get at least the bare necessities done,” said Jim Manley, a former senior adviser to Senate Democrats.“While the Trump sycophants in the House are going to make a lot of noise and throw up a lot of smoke,” he added, “I don’t foresee Congress blowing past the debt limit, for instance, because of Trump-caused chaos post indictment.”Mr. Trump’s appetite for attention has been fundamental to his identity for decades. As a celebrity developer, he happily played out his marital issues and affairs in the New York tabloids; his 1990 split with his first wife Ivana made the front page 11 days in a row. He loved making cameo appearances in movies and television shows from “Sex and the City” to “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” He slapped his name on everything from hotels, golf courses and towers to steaks, bottled water and neckties.As president, he appeared on camera far more often than his predecessors, rarely missing an opportunity to make the story of the day about himself. During his first Senate impeachment trial, for abuse of power by pressuring Ukraine’s government to investigate Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump suggested he would show up on the Senate floor to make his case himself, to the horror of lawyers who managed to talk him out of it.When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Mr. Trump eagerly conducted daily news briefings for nearly two months, dispensing misinformation and stoking divisions, to the horror of doctors and allies who only belatedly talked him into stopping. Nonetheless, he boasted about the size of the audience he was drawing as Americans were dying by the hundreds of thousands. When he himself got Covid and then recovered, he toyed with the idea of ripping off his shirt to reveal a Superman T-shirt to demonstrate his virility.Donald Trump answering questions in a coronavirus briefing at the White House in April 2020.Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times“The most unique thing about the former president is that he values the image surrounding an event more than its tangible quality,” said Michael D’Antonio, another Trump biographer. “The moment will pass, but the article, videotape, photo, or book will remain. That’s what he’ll care about more — unless of course he goes to prison.”But Barbara A. Res, who worked for Mr. Trump for 18 years as an executive at his development company and later broke with him, does not think Mr. Trump expects to be found guilty. “He’s incapable of believing that he’s wrong,” she said. And she doubted he would comply even with a gag order.“To be honest, nobody tells Donald what to do. Really,” Ms. Res said. A judge, she said, may hesitate to enforce a contempt of court order. “Even people that hate Trump or dislike Trump would probably think it was not a good idea to put him in jail for contempt of a gag order,” she said. And so, she concluded, “He will not shut up.” More

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      Trump and Fox News, Twin Titans of Politics, Hit With Back-to-Back Rebukes

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      Donald Trump’s criminal indictment and Fox News’s civil trial have nothing in common, but, combined, they delivered a rare reckoning for two forces that have transformed politics.For the better part of a decade, Donald J. Trump and his allies at Fox News have beguiled some Americans and enraged others as they spun up an alternative world where elections turned on fraud, one political party oppressed another, and one man stood against his detractors to carry his version of truth to an adoring electorate.Then this week, on two consecutive days, the former president and the highest-rated cable news channel were delivered a dose of reality by the American legal system.On Thursday, Mr. Trump became the first former president in history to be indicted on criminal charges, after a Manhattan grand jury’s examination of hush money paid to a pornographic film actress in the final days of the 2016 election.The next day, a judge in Delaware Superior Court concluded that Fox hosts and guests had repeatedly made false claims about voting machines and their supposed role in a fictitious plot to steal the 2020 election, and that Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network should go to trial.A lawyer for Fox News, Dan Webb, center, leaving the first hearing for the Dominion v. Fox case in Wilmington, Del., on March 21.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesBoth defendants dispute the claims. Still, the back-to-back blows against twin titans of American politics landed as a reminder of the still-unfolding reckoning with the tumult of the Trump presidency.For the left, the seismic week delivered an “I told you so” years in the making. Democrats who have long wanted Mr. Trump criminally charged got the satisfaction of watching a prosecutor and a grand jury agree.A day later, after years of arguing that Fox News was hardly fair and balanced, they could read a judge’s finding that Fox had not conducted “good-faith, disinterested reporting” on Dominion. Fox argues that statements made on air alleging election fraud are protected by the First Amendment.While the two cases have nothing in common in substance, they share a rare and powerful potential. In both, any final judgments will be rendered in a courtroom and not by bickering pundits on cable news and editorial pages.“There will always be a remnant, no matter how the matter is resolved in court, who will refuse to accept the judgment,” said Norman Eisen, a government ethics lawyer who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. “But when you look at other post-upheaval societies, judicial processes reduce factions down to a few hard-core believers.”He added, “A series of court cases and judgments can break the fever.”That, of course, could prove to be a Democrat’s wishful thinking.In this moment of constant campaigning and tribal partisanship, even the courts have had difficulty puncturing the ideological bubbles that Mr. Trump and Fox News pundits have created. The legal system produced a $25 million settlement of fraud charges against Trump University, dismissed dozens of lies about malfeasance in the 2020 election, pressed for the search for missing classified documents and ruled numerous times that Dominion’s machines did not in fact change votes.Yet hundreds of thousands of Americans remain devoted to both defendants.Embarrassing and damaging material has already come out through both cases, with little immediate sign of backlash..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Thousands of text messages, emails and other internal company documents disclosed to Dominion and released publicly portray high-level figures at the network as bent on maintaining ratings supremacy by giving audiences what they wanted, regardless of the truth.Texts show the star prime time host Tucker Carlson calling Mr. Trump a “demonic force,” and the chairman of Fox Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, describing Sean Hannity as “privately disgusted by Trump.”Fox News has said Dominion took private conversations out of context. Its ratings dominance appears untouched by the negative headlines in recent weeks. Data from Nielsen show that in March the 10 top-rated cable shows in America were all on Fox News, led by “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” and that 14 of the top 20 were produced by the network.Still, experts believe the case has already resonated.“I’ve never seen a case before where journalists said they didn’t believe the story they were telling but were going to keep telling it because it’s what the audience wanted to hear,” said Lyrissa Lidsky, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Florida and an expert on defamation law. “It’s a shock wave saying it’s time to get serious about accountability.”Democrats, too, could see their illusions fall. Although many have clamored to see Mr. Trump charged, and felt vindicated this week, the risks of failure are considerable.If Mr. Trump’s lawyers file to have the charges simply dismissed as prosecutorial overreach and quickly win, the consequences would almost certainly strengthen Mr. Trump, who will make the case — and possibly others to follow — central to his primary campaign.But in a court of law, the magnetism that Mr. Trump and Fox News have over their audiences may lose some of its power. No matter how many times the former president insists outside the courtroom that he’s the victim of a political prosecution, inside the courtroom his lawyers will have to address the specific charges. They will win or lose based on legal arguments, not bluster.“I’ve been around for 50 years, and I’ve heard the political argument before,” said Stanley M. Brand, a veteran Washington defense lawyer. Mr. Brand cited the “Abscam” bribery case of the 1970s, when the defendants accused President Jimmy Carter of orchestrating the bribery sting, or the investigation of Senator Robert G. Torricelli, which was also surrounded by charges of politics. “It’s never worked in a court of law.”Members of the media and protesters outside Trump Tower in New York City on Thursday.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesJames Bopp Jr., a conservative defense lawyer, said he agreed with virtually all Republicans that the Manhattan district attorney had coaxed his grand jury to bring forward a specious indictment for the political purpose of damaging Mr. Trump.But, he said, Mr. Trump’s lawyers must answer the charges, not grandstand on the politics.“A charge is not automatically dismissible because it’s brought for political purpose,” he said. “The motive of prosecutors may be pertinent to the broader society. It’s not pertinent to a judge.”The exact charges against Mr. Trump may not be known until he is arraigned on Tuesday. The grand jury that brought the indictment was examining payments to Stormy Daniels and the core question of whether those payments were illegally disguised as business expenditures, a misdemeanor that would rise to a felony if those payments could be labeled an illegal campaign expenditure.If past legal skirmishes are an indication, Mr. Trump is likely to drag the proceedings out for months, if not years, with motion after motion as he builds his third presidential campaign around what he called on Friday the “unprecedented political persecution of the president and blatant interference in the 2024 election.”Likewise, Fox News will almost certainly continue to frame the Dominion case as that of a corporation intent on stifling the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and freedom of the press.“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news,” the network said in a statement Friday.That may be left for a court to decide.Ken Bensinger More

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      Trump’s Return to Fox News Gets a Cool Reception … on Fox News

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      The network used to be a safe space for the former president. But Brian Kilmeade, Jason Chaffetz and others had tough words for his appearance on “Hannity,” his first Fox interview in months.Reunions can be awkward.Former President Donald J. Trump finally returned this week to his old stomping ground, Fox News, after several months away. The chilly reception from some of his onetime media allies underscored his uneasy place at the moment in Republican politics.Yes, Sean Hannity, the Fox News anchor who conducted the interview, listened patiently as Mr. Trump reeled off his usual talking points about the “fake news media” and “horrible” Democrats. The former president said Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination, would be toiling “at a pizza parlor” without his endorsement. And he concluded with the grim assessment that “our country is dead.”But while Fox News and Mr. Trump existed for years in a kind of symbiosis — with on-air personalities effusively praising Mr. Trump, and benefiting from big ratings for his frequent appearances — the network is no longer the all-encompassing Trump safe space it used to be.Rupert Murdoch has used media properties like Fox News to promote Mr. DeSantis as a potential savior of the Republican Party. Until this week, Mr. Trump had not appeared on a Fox News broadcast since declaring his candidacy in November. And minutes after his interview aired, network personalities were taking the former president to task.Laura Ingraham, whose prime-time program directly follows “Hannity,” was once so close to Mr. Trump that she attended his election night party in November 2020. On her Monday show, she allowed the New York Post columnist Miranda Devine to criticize Mr. Trump for “complaining endlessly about the past” and “constantly dwelling on grievance.”When her other guest, the Trump loyalist Stephen Miller, loudly interjected that the former president “has put forward a new policy plan every week,” Ms. Ingraham sounded skeptical of his argument. “Why isn’t he talking about them?” she asked Mr. Miller.The next morning, Jason Chaffetz, a Republican congressman turned Fox News contributor, denounced Mr. Trump’s performance as “absolutely horrific.”“I voted for Donald Trump twice, I have defended him countless times; I thought he was horrific,” Mr. Chaffetz said. “I think that was the worst interview I’ve seen the president do.” He went on to criticize the former president for “whining,” “complaining” and playing “the victim card.” Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, two of the co-hosts of the morning show “Fox & Friends,” also knocked Mr. Trump’s performance.Nielsen ratings — one of Mr. Trump’s preferred metrics — provided their own kind of tough review. In past years, a Trump interview almost always delivered Fox News’s biggest audience of the day. On Monday, Mr. Trump drew 3.04 million viewers, higher than the average episode of “Hannity” but well below that day’s viewership for “The Five” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”With a defamation suit against Fox News filed by Dominion Voting Systems hurtling toward a trial, it was notable that Mr. Hannity’s interview with Mr. Trump was taped. Mr. Trump’s baseless claims about a “rigged” 2020 election are central to the Dominion case; a live appearance by Mr. Trump in which he repeats those claims could be hazardous for the network. It could also put a Fox News anchor in the awkward position of having to contradict Mr. Trump on the air, the kind of exchange that could easily go viral and turn off some of the network’s viewers.Mr. DeSantis, meanwhile, continues to rely on Fox News and other Murdoch properties for his major media appearances, even as his absence from other conservative-friendly outlets like Breitbart News has come under new scrutiny.Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News star who now hosts a successful podcast, revealed to listeners this week that Mr. DeSantis had been ducking her invitations.“I love Piers Morgan, he’s a pal of mine, but why would you go sit with the British guy and not come on this show?” Ms. Kelly said on her program, referring to Mr. DeSantis’s recent interview with the London-based Mr. Morgan.“I will venture to say he’s afraid,” Ms. Kelly added. “I’m just going to put it out there: He’s afraid because he knows the kind of interview that I would give him. He’s not going to get a pass.”The Florida governor avoids most one-on-one interactions with the mainstream media. Other than a recent appearance on Eric Bolling’s Newsmax program, Mr. DeSantis has leaned extensively on venues controlled by Mr. Murdoch, even those based overseas. He gave an interview to The Times of London. Mr. Morgan is based at TalkTV, a British network owned by Mr. Murdoch, although his DeSantis interview aired on the streaming channel Fox Nation and was excerpted by The New York Post.It has not been lost on Mr. Trump’s allies that Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have softened when he is enjoying mostly sympathetic coverage from Fox News.And there are subtle signs that Mr. DeSantis may not always be able to bank on the network’s good graces. On Tuesday, Jesse Watters, a co-host of “The Five,” offered some advice to the Florida governor in the wake of Mr. Trump’s attacks.“DeSantis is taking a bruising,” Mr. Watters said. “If I were Ron, I would start talking. Because every day that goes by, Trump draws blood.” He added: “How many more weeks and months is this going to sustain itself? Ron’s got to come out and say something, or else he’s just going to limp into this primary.” More

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      Fox Argues Top Executives Weren’t Involved in Voter Fraud Broadcasts

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      Lawyers for the company, which faces a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, are pushing for a judge to rule in their favor before a trial.WILMINGTON, Del. — Fox Corporation executives, including Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, had no direct involvement in what aired on the company’s cable news channels, and therefore their company should not be found liable in a $1.6 billion defamation case, lawyers for Fox argued Wednesday in a Delaware court.The argument was part of Fox’s request for a pretrial victory. Dominion Voting Systems has accused both Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, of defaming the business. Dominion says Fox’s shows repeatedly linked its voting machines to a vast conspiracy of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.Erin Murphy, a lawyer for both Fox Corporation and Fox News, said there was no evidence that corporate executives were involved in the Fox News shows in question. She said Dominion would need to show that they had directly participated in the broadcasts to meet the high standard needed to prove defamation.Ms. Murphy conceded that some of the executives had the power to bar certain guests from the shows, but said: “It’s not enough for them to show that they have the ability to step in. They have to have been involved.”Fox has asked that Fox Corporation be dropped from the lawsuit.Dominion must prove that Fox knowingly broadcast false information about the company, or was reckless enough to disregard substantial evidence that the claims were not true. Defamation cases have traditionally proved hard to win because of the First Amendment’s broad free speech protections. But legal experts say Dominion may have enough evidence to clear that high bar.Dominion, too, is asking for summary judgment; its legal team gave its arguments in Delaware Superior Court on Tuesday. The judge, Eric M. Davis, said he would make his decision by April 11. A jury trial is scheduled to start April 17.Judge Davis told both sides on Wednesday that he preferred for trial witnesses to appear in person rather than over a video link, setting up the possibility that Fox News hosts like Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson could show up. He said Rupert Murdoch might also be compelled to testify in person, though he did not issue any decisions on the matter.Fox lawyers had submitted a letter to the judge on Monday asking that Mr. Murdoch and some other executives not be compelled to testify, saying that it would amount to “hardships” on the witnesses and that their testimony would “add nothing other than media interest.”After Fox finished its arguments, a lawyer for several media outlets, including The New York Times, asked the judge to review redactions that Fox had made to some of the communications it handed over, arguing that Fox kept too much confidential. Judge Davis said he would consider the request.Judge Davis also remarked on a lawsuit filed in Delaware on Monday by a Fox News producer, Abby Grossberg. She argues that Fox lawyers coerced her into providing misleading information in her deposition in the Dominion lawsuit.Judge Davis said the lawsuit had been originally assigned to him but then given to another judge in Delaware Superior Court.Fox News said in a statement on Wednesday: “Despite the noise and confusion that Dominion has generated by presenting cherry-picked quotes without context, this case is ultimately about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute need to cover the news.” More

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      Fox and Dominion Urge Judge to Rule on Case

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      At the start of a pretrial hearing for the $1.6 billion defamation trial, the judge said he was still weighing whether to issue a summary judgment.A Delaware judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News said in a pretrial hearing on Tuesday that he was still weighing whether to issue a summary judgment for either side in the case.In a hearing in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday, lawyers for Fox News and Dominion both pushed the judge, Eric M. Davis of the Delaware Superior Court, to rule on the case without a jury. Dominion, an election technology company, is accusing Fox of spreading false claims of widespread vote-rigging in the 2020 presidential election.“I haven’t made a decision,” Judge Davis said.The case centers on Fox’s coverage of the 2020 election, when President Donald J. Trump and his supporters began to spread false claims about widespread voter fraud.On Tuesday, Dominion argued that a trove of internal communications and depositions it had obtained showed that Fox executives and hosts had known that some of the claims about election fraud were false but had given them airtime anyway. Fox asked Judge Davis to dismiss the case outright, saying its actions were protected by the First Amendment.A trial is scheduled to begin on April 17.The lawsuit poses a sizable threat to Fox’s business and reputation. Dominion must prove that Fox knowingly broadcast false information about the company, or was reckless enough to disregard substantial evidence that the claims were not true — a legal standard known as “actual malice.” While defamation cases have traditionally proved hard to win, legal experts say Dominion may have enough evidence to clear that high bar.Justin Nelson, a lawyer for Dominion, told the court that it had plenty of evidence that Fox knew what it was doing.Mr. Nelson cited, for example, an excerpt from a deposition by Joe Dorrego, the chief financial officer of Fox News, who was asked whether Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the top executives of Fox News’s parent company, knew that the claims were being aired on the network. Mr. Dorrego answered: “They were certainly aware that the allegations were being reported on Fox News.”“They allowed people to come on the air to make those charges, despite knowing they are false,” Mr. Nelson told the judge.Erin Murphy, a lawyer for Fox, argued in court on Tuesday that a reasonable viewer of Fox News and Fox Business would have understood that the hosts were merely reporting that the president and his lawyers were making the fraud claims, which was newsworthy, and not making factual statements.“We do not think that we are just scot-free simply because a guest said something rather than a host,” Ms. Murphy said. “What we resist is that Dominion’s position seems to be that we are automatically liable because a guest said something.”Ms. Murphy told the judge that there was more context for the shows and statements singled out by Dominion in its complaint that proved the hosts had been merely presenting statements of fact. As an example, she referred to a Dec. 12, 2020, broadcast of “Fox & Friends,” during which the hosts asked Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, about legal challenges relating to voter fraud.“I don’t see how somebody watching that show thinks that by merely asking the president’s lawyer ‘What are you alleging and what evidence do you have to support it?’ the hosts are saying we believe these allegations to be true,” Ms. Murphy said.Ms. Murphy added that there was no evidence that any Fox Corporation executive had been involved in the airing of defamatory statements.Lawyers for Fox are scheduled to finish their arguments before the judge on Wednesday. More