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      Mike Pence must testify before grand jury investigating January 6 – reports

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      Former US vice-president Mike Pence must testify in front of a grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress, a federal judge reportedly ruled on Tuesday.Multiple news outlets reported the ruling, which remained under seal.Trump and Pence himself have both sought to stop Pence from testifying in the justice department investigation of Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.At issue are conversations between Pence and Trump leading up to January 6 and the attack on the Capitol, which is now linked to nine deaths, more than a thousand arrests and hundreds of convictions.Lawyers for Trump cited executive privilege, the concept that communications between a president and aides are protected.Lawyers for Pence argued he was protected by the separation of powers, via the vice-president’s role as president of the Senate, which he performed on 6 January 2021, the day supporters who were told to “fight like hell” by Trump tried to block certification of Biden’s win.On Tuesday, James E Boasberg, a judge in federal district court in Washington DC, reportedly rejected both arguments.Pence is not expected to have to answer questions about his own actions on 6 January 2021, when he was spirited away from a mob which chanted about hanging him while a makeshift gallows went up outside.Pence has described that experience in a book, So Help Me God, published ahead of an expected run against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. He has also criticised Trump’s actions in public remarks. Trump has said the January 6 Capitol attack was Pence’s fault.On Tuesday, Pence was reportedly considering an appeal. Robert Costa, a CBS correspondent and co-author with Bob Woodward of the bestselling book Peril, about Trump’s attempt to cling onto power, said: “Pence has said he might see this all the way to the supreme court.”The Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe has described Pence’s defence as “meritless”, saying: “Pence needn’t file a foolish appeal just to prove his [pro-Trump] credentials. He’s done enough in that regard. Now he needs to show he’s law-abiding.”Reporting the ruling on Tuesday, the Associated Press said it set up the “extraordinary scenario of a former vice-president potentially testifying against his former boss in a criminal investigation”.Trump faces legal jeopardy on multiple fronts.An indictment is expected in New York, over a hush money payment to an adult film actor. His attempted election subversion is under investigation in Georgia and at the federal level. Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, is also investigating Trump’s retention of classified material.Authorities in New York have mounted a civil suit over Trump’s business affairs. In the same state, Trump also faces a defamation trial over an allegation of rape from the writer E Jean Carroll.Trump denies all wrongdoing, claiming to be the victim of prosecutors motivated by political and racial animus.He continues to lead polling regarding the Republican nomination for president. More

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      Trump’s verbal assaults pose risks to prosecutors and could fuel violence

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      Donald Trump’s demagogic attacks on prosecutors investigating criminal charges against him are aimed at riling up his base and could spark violence, but show no signs of letting up as a potential indictment in at least one case looms, say legal experts.At campaign rallies, speeches and on social media Trump has lambasted state and federal prosecutors as “thugs” and claimed that two of them – who are Black – are “racist”, language designed to inflame racial tension.He has also used antisemitic tropes by referring to a conspiracy of “globalists” and the influence of billionaire Jewish financier George Soros.Trump’s drive to undercut four criminal inquiries that he faces is reaching a fever pitch as a Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry looks poised to bring charges against Trump over his key part in a $130,000 hush money payment in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels with whom he allegedly had an affair.In his blitz to deter and obfuscate two of the criminal investigations, Trump has resorted to verbal assaults on two Black district attorneys in Manhattan and Georgia labeling them as “racist”, even as he simultaneously battles to win the White House again.In a broader attack on the four state and federal investigations at a Texas rally on Saturday Trump blasted the “thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system”, while on his Truth Social platform last week he warned of “possible death and destruction” if he’s charged in the hush money inquiry.But now Trump’s incendiary attacks against the federal and state inquiries is prompting warnings that Trump’s unrelenting attacks on prosecutors could fuel violence, as he did on January 6 with bogus claims that the 2020 was stolen from him and a mob of his backers attacked the Capitol leading to at least five deaths.“Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, amplified through his social media postings and his high decibel fearmongering in Texas, pose clear physical dangers to prosecutors and investigators,” said former acting chief of the fraud section at the justice department Paul Pelletier. “With Trump’s actions promoting the January 6 insurrection serving as a cautionary tale, the potential for violent reactions to any of his charges cannot be understated.”Ex-prosecutors see Trump reverting to tactics he’s often deployed in legal and political battles.Trump’s invective say experts won’t deter prosecutors as they separately weigh fraud, obstruction and other charges related to January 6 and other issues, but echo scare tactics he’s used before as in his two impeachments, and may help Trump’s chances of becoming the Republican nominee by angering the base which could influence primary outcomes.“None of these accusations about the motives of prosecutors, however, will negate the evidence of Trump’s own crimes. A jury will focus on the facts and the law, and not any of this name calling. The Trump strategy may work in the court of public opinion, but not in a court of law,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan.That may explain why Trump has received more political cover from three conservative House committee chairs, who joined his effort to intimidate Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, by launching investigations to obtain his records and testimony, threats that Bragg and legal experts have denounced as political stunts and improper.The legal stakes for Trump are enormous, and unprecedented for a former president, as the criminal inquiries have been gaining momentum with more key witnesses who have past or present ties to Trump testifying before grand juries, and others getting subpoenas.Two investigations led by special counsel Jack Smith are separately looking into possible charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding and defrauding the US government as he schemed with top allies to block Joe Biden from taking office, and potential obstruction and other charges tied to Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office.Further, Fulton county Georgia district attorney, Fani Willis, has said decisions are “imminent” about potentially charging Trump and others who tried to overturn Joe Biden’s win there in 2020 with erroneous claims of fraud.Much of the probe’s work has involved a special grand jury that reportedly has recommended several indictments, with a focus on Trump’s high pressure call on 2 January 2021 to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger beseeching him to just “find” 11,780 votes to help block Joe Biden’s win there.Trump has denied all wrong doing and denounced the inquiries as “witch hunts”.Little wonder though that Trump’s squadron of lawyers has lately filed a batch of motions in Georgia and Washington DC with mixed success to slow prosecutors as they have moved forward in gathering evidence from key witnesses and mull charges against Trump.“Blustering in court or in the media about the supposed bias or racism of the Fulton county and Manhattan county prosecutors will not convince a court to remove a democratically-elected prosecutor, and certainly the Republicans in the House of Representatives have no legal authority ability to influence the course of criminal justice in New York state proceedings,” said Fordham law professor and ex-prosecutor in New York’s southern district Bruce Green.Green stressed: “None of Trump’s moves, such as calling prosecutors racists, are likely to throw any of the prosecutors off their game: prosecutors tend to be focused, determined and thick-skinned.”Likewise, ex-US attorney in Georgia Michael Moore told the Guardian the Trump attacks on the two black prosecutors are “completely baseless. The charges of racism against the prosecutors is more of an indication of the weakness of his claims than most anything else he has said.”Moore scoffed too at the moves by Trump’s House Republican allies.“It’s rich to me that the Republicans in the House claim to be the party of limited government, but as soon as they get in power and look like they might lose another election, they immediately use their big government power to meddle in a matter that purely belongs to the local jurisdiction.”NYU law professor Stephen Gillers sees similar dynamics at play in Trump’s tactics.“Trump cannot stop the judicial process, although he can try to slow it. But he can undermine its credibility through his charges and by mobilizing his supporters. I see what he’s doing now as aimed at them, just as he tried to discredit the election returns in their eyes and anger them with baseless charges over the “steal”.The weakness of Trump’s legal moves was revealed in two court rulings in DC requiring testimony before grand juries from former top aides including ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the January 6 inquiry, and one of his current lawyers Evan Corcoran in the classified documents case.The two rulings should give a good boost to the special counsel in his separate investigations of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss on January 6 when Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s win about which Meadows must now testify, and Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar a Lago after he left the White House about which Corcoran has to testify.As the four investigations intensify, more aggressive moves by Trump and his lawyers to derail potential charges in Georgia, Manhattan and from the special counsel are expected before, as well as after, any charges may be filed.“If I were on the prosecution teams in Manhattan or Georgia, I would expect Trump to assert every defense he can think of, including accusing the prosecutors of misconduct,” McQuade said.A judge on Monday ordered Fani Willis to respond by 1 May to the Trump team’s motion seeking to bar her from further investigating or charging Trump, and wants all testimony from some 75 witnesses, including Meadows and Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, before the special grand jury rejected.The judge’s order was in response to a Trump legal motion that McQuade said “appears to be baseless”.Former Watergate prosecutor Phlip Lacovara told the Guardian that Trump’s lawyers are deploying different legal tactics in the investigations.“The Georgia strategy is partly a strategy of delay,” in which the Trump team is “raising dozens and dozens of objections, many of which are specious, in the hope that one will be sufficient to work on appeal and to keep him out of jail,” Lacovara said.In Manhattan, he added, they’re trying “to create the impression that this is a highly visible political stunt to exclude Trump from running”.That tactic could help in “trying to pollute the jury pool” since a hung jury would be good for Trump. “All he needs is one juror who believes this is all a concocted plot.”Former DoJ officials and experts expect Trump and his lawyers will keep up a frenzied stream of hyperbolic attacks and legal actions.“This is more of what we saw during the election,” said former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer who served in the George HW Bush administration. “He throws up gibberish and obstruction.” More

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      Fox News and Dominion face off in court over 2020 election claims

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      Attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News will return to court on Wednesday for the second day of a pre-trial hearing previewing many arguments in a closely watched $1.6bn defamation case.Dominion is suing the rightwing network over its decision to repeatedly air false claims about its voting equipment in 2020 as Donald Trump and allies tried to overturn the election.Both sides are asking Eric Davis, a Delaware superior court judge, to rule in their favor ahead of trial.Davis said on Tuesday he had not reached a decision. His ruling will probably set out the scope of issues for a trial scheduled for mid-April.On Tuesday, Justin Nelson, a Dominion lawyer, presented a slew of internal communications from Fox News showing hosts, producers and executives all knew the claims about Dominion were false.That evidence is in service of Dominion’s effort to prove that Fox News committed “actual malice” when it knew the statements were false or recklessly disregarded the truth when it published claims about Dominion.On Wednesday, the hearing will feature the remainder of an argument from Erin Murphy, presenting Fox News’s case to the court.Much of her argument on Tuesday focused on the idea that Fox News was not presenting facts to its audience, but rather what reasonable viewers would have understood to be allegations from Donald Trump and his lawyers.She is expected to focus on why Fox News’s actions did not meet the “actual malice” standard required to prove defamation.Davis peppered both sides with questions on Tuesday and at times seemed skeptical of some of Fox News’s arguments.Part of its argument in the case is that it cannot be held liable for defamation because it was reporting newsworthy events in a neutral and dispassionate way.Davis questioned whether Fox News’s reporting was neutral and dispassionate, pressing Murphy about tweets from the host Lou Dobbs that contained the hashtags “Maga” and “America First”.Abby Grossberg, a Fox News staffer, separately sued the network this week, saying she was coerced by attorneys into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit. More

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      Trump’s own research showed that voter fraud did not cost him election – report

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      The Donald Trump election campaign’s efforts to show that thousands of ballots were cast in the name of dead people in the pivotal state of Georgia during the 2020 election resulted in a research report that in fact contradicted Trump’s claims that widespread election fraud cost him the presidency, according to a report on Friday.Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia in 2020 was key and the Trump team’s own information went against Trump’s subsequent denial of the legitimate win by his opponent, according to the Washington Post.Prosecutors investigating Trump’s role in the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 by his supporters attempting to overturn the certification by Congress of Biden’s victory obtained the campaign research, the Washington Post reported.Trump’s insistence that thousands of ballots came from dead people became especially infamous following revelations that he had urged the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes so he would win, during a 2 January 2021 call. The Trump-commissioned study refuting this very claim “was dated one day prior” to this call, per the Post.“Dead people”, Trump nevertheless remarked during the call. “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”Raffensperger pushed back, saying: “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong.” Trump reportedly insisted: “In one state, we have a tremendous amount of dead people. So I don’t know – I’m sure we do in Georgia, too. I’m sure we do in Georgia, too.”Raffensperger’s comments were bolstered by an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report in December 2021 that Georgia authorities confirmed a mere four cases of ballots cast in the name of dead people, with every instance involving a ballot cast by the relative of a deceased person. Georgia prosecutors are investigating whether Trump and his allies broke the law in their efforts to reverse election results.Trump also made the unsubstantiated claim that “a tremendous number of dead people” cast ballots in Michigan. “I think it was … 18,000. Some unbelievably high number, much higher than yours, you were in the 4-5,000 category.”The Trump campaign-commissioned report said analysts had “high confidence” there were only nine deceased voters in Fulton county, Georgia. The researchers also said they believed the “potential statewide exposure” of dead voters was 23, the newspaper said.The research also contradicted Trump’s claims that some 1,500 ballots came from dead voters and that over 42,000 voted twice in Nevada. The analysis expressed “high confidence” that just 12 deceased-voter ballots were submitted in Clark county, Nevada; they said the number of possible double voters ranged from 45 to just over 9,000.While the report does not outright state that Biden won the election, the analysis also said they did not have evidence to substantiate fraud claims about five decisive states’ results. “This result was not unexpected,” the analysis reportedly said. “Our analysis of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada concluded that in each state the final tabulated result was mathematically possible given absentee request rates.” More

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      Candidate Marianne Williamson hit by claims of ‘foaming, spitting rage’

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      Less than two weeks into her second campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, the self-help author Marianne Williamson was hit by claims her public message of love and compassion is undermined by behind-the-scenes behavior including “foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage”.Speaking to Politico, 12 former staffers painted a picture of unpredictable anger, tending toward verbal and emotional abuse, beneath the bestseller’s promotion of spiritual calm.“It would be foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage,” said one former staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It was traumatic. And the experience, in the end, was terrifying.”Williamson launched her second campaign earlier this month, saying that while she did not expect to win she was seeking to challenge the “system”.The author of 14 books describes herself as “a leader in spiritual and religiously progressive circles”. She established a national profile on Oprah Winfrey’s TV talkshow and has taken often controversial positions on issues including depression and vaccine mandates.“I want to be president because this country needs to make an economic U-turn,” Williamson told ABC, adding that free healthcare, college and childcare were among her priorities.“The system that effectuates and perpetuates that kind of income and opportunity inequality is not changing itself,” she said, adding: “It’s not going to change if we continue to elect the same-old, same-old.”In 2020, before dropping out of the primary, Williamson made a splash when, addressing Donald Trump from the debate stage, she said: “I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field. And, sir, love will win.”Speaking to Politico, however, three former staffers said Williamson, 70, was apt to throw her phone at them amid outbursts so intense that on four occasions hotel staff knocked on her door to check if all was OK.In one incident, four former staffers said, Williamson became so enraged about a poorly planned swing through South Carolina she repeatedly punched a car door. After her hand started to swell, she was taken to hospital.All 12 staffers said Williamson would yell until people were brought to tears.Williamson called the descriptions “slanderous” and “categorically untrue”. She denied ever throwing a phone at staffers but acknowledged the car door incident, saying a “car door is not a person”.“Former staffers trying to score points with the political establishment by smearing me might be good for their careers but the intention is to deflect attention from the important issues facing the American people,” Williamson said.Williamson also said she expects “concerted efforts to dismiss and denigrate … but the amplification of outright lies should not occur”.Paul Hodes, a former congressman who was Williamson’s New Hampshire campaign director, said reports of her behavior were “consistent with my observations, consistent with contemporaneous discussions I had about her conduct with staff members, and entirely consistent with my own personal experience with her behavior on multiple occasions”.Staffers acknowledged that the accusations could been seen to be misogynistic, of a sort of criticism that unfairly targets women. But, they said, Williamson’s behavior went beyond any that could be viewed through such a lens.During her 2020 candidacy, Politico reported, Williamson burned through two campaign managers and multiple state directors, field organizers and volunteers.“She would get caught in these vicious emotional loops,” said one former staffer. “This was day after day after day. It wasn’t that she was having a bad day or moment. It was just boom, boom, boom – and often for no legitimate reason.”The staffers said they were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. The message, one said, was: ‘Don’t fuck with me because I will make your life a living hell.’”Demands to sign NDAs extended to taxi drivers and other service sector workers, staffers said. Williamson denied that.Some people said they joined the campaign simply because they needed a job and Williamson was offering them one. Others said they thought that there was room in the race for a dark horse candidate to push people, including Biden, on topics such as reparations. And some said that Williamson’s books on compassion and forgiveness had helped them through their own struggles of divorce, addiction and loss of family members.Instead, they walked away feeling emotionally tormented.“It’s cliche, but all I can say is: don’t meet your heroes,” said a fifth former staffer. More

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      Trump would have believed aliens stole votes, key ally reportedly told jury

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      Such was Donald Trump’s troubled state of mind after the 2020 election that he would have believed aliens had stolen his ballots if anyone had told him so, a leading Republican senator said, according to a member of the special grand jury in the investigation of the former president’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in Georgia.According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an unnamed juror described Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina and a close Trump ally, as saying: “During that time, if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots … Trump would’ve believed it.”Running for the Republican nomination again, Trump continues to push the lie that his conclusive defeat was the result of electoral fraud.The Atlanta paper interviewed five of the 23 members of the Fulton county grand jury, whose report was made partially public last month. The jury recommended indictments. Against whom is not known.In Georgia, Trump and his allies, including Graham, pressed state officials to investigate or overturn Biden’s narrow win.The Journal-Constitution said Emily Kohrs, the jury foreperson who spoke to the media last month, was not among jurors it spoke to.Lawyers for Trump have tried to use Kohrs’ comments to have the case dismissed.One juror said criticism of Kohrs led to the group being “portrayed as not serious. That really bothered me because that’s not how I felt. I took it very seriously.”Another said: “One of the most important things we’ll be a part of in our life was this eight-month process that we did … [it was] incredibly important to get it right.”Describing evidence not previously public, jurors described a call in which Trump tried to persuade the state House speaker, David Ralston, to convene a special session and overturn Biden’s win.Ralston, who died in November, “basically cut the president off”, the juror said.“He said, ‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate’ … He just basically took the wind out of the sails. ‘Well, thank you,’ you know, is all the president could say.”The jurors heard from poll workers targeted by Trump and threatened by his supporters.“I was pretty emotional throughout the whole thing,” one juror said. “I wouldn’t cry in front of any of the witnesses, but when I would get in my car, I was like, I just left that and I have to just go do my job now? … I just know things that are hard to know.”Witnesses who invoked their fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination – reported to have included the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani – proved frustrating.“When people would take the fifth over and over, we could kind of go, ‘Ugh,’” a juror said. “Not because we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh you’re guilty, whatever.’ It was like, ‘We’re going to be here all day.’”One juror said prosecutors used video of speeches, interviews or other testimony if a witness did not answer.Trump did not appear. One juror said: “With the benefit of hindsight, we should have sent a voluntary invitation.”The juror said his mind had been changed by moves to indict Trump in New York, over a hush money payment to a porn star.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, is now deciding whether to convene another grand jury to issue indictments. The full report remains under wraps.One juror said: “A lot’s gonna come out sooner or later. And it’s gonna be massive. It’s gonna be massive.” More

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      Tucker Carlson firestorm over Trump texts threatens to engulf Fox News

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      Tucker Carlson firestorm over Trump texts threatens to engulf Fox News The network is facing a $1.6bn false-claims lawsuit – and its top star’s private texts about the ex-president are causing anguishTucker Carlson was once seen as untouchable. Now the most popular TV host on American cable news is at the center of a firestorm threatening to engulf Fox News and also anger Donald Trump, whose conspiracy theory-laden political cause he has long championed and who his audience loves.Court filings attached to the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit accuse Fox News of allowing its stars to broadcast false accusations about rigged voting machines in the 2020 presidential election.Donald Trump Access Hollywood tape can be used in civil rape trial, judge rulesRead moreThe documents contained numerous emails detailing the private views and concerns of senior Fox management and its stars, which often seemed at odds with what they were publicly broadcasting to their audience.While anchors Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo have been singled out for pushing false claims of a fraudulent election, the fallout has landed primarily on Carlson.In group chats obtained by Dominion, the network’s biggest names – Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity – appeared to doubt claims of election fraud that were featured prominently on the network. At the same time, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch said in a court deposition that anyone who knowingly allowed lies to be broadcast “should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of”.So far, Fox is standing by its stars. On Thursday, Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s eldest son, heir apparent and executive chairman and chief executive of Fox Corporation, voiced support for management, its roster of stars and backed Fox New’s editorial standards.“A news organization has an obligation – and it is an obligation – to report news fulsomely, wholesomely and without fear or favor. That’s what Fox News has always done and that’s what Fox News will always do,” he said.That might not wash with many observers and media critics. But likely of equal concern, especially for Carlson, are some of the private opinions voiced about Trump. The Dominion lawsuit revealed a text from Carlson declaring: “I hate him passionately.”Nor is that the only political fight Carlson became mired in last week. Carlson was directly criticized by the White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates for describing the January 6 rioters as “orderly and meek … sightseers” as he began broadcasting footage from the insurrection handed to him by Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy.Ironically, news of Carlson’s antipathy for Trump broke around the same time the ex-president was praising Carlson as doing a “great job” in his presentation of Capitol security video.Many people – including some Republicans – reacted with outrage to Carlson’s broadcasts, with chimed with a broader far-right push in the US to recast the January 6 attack on the Capitol as an overly enthusiastic demonstration and the hundreds of people jailed for it as political prisoners.The White House, Bates said, “agrees with the chief of the Capitol police and the wide range of bipartisan lawmakers who have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our constitution and the rule of law – which cost police officers their lives.”The Guardian contacted Fox for comment but received no reply.Carlson, for his part, has been unapologetic. He claimed the clips offered “conclusive” evidence that Democrats and the select committee that organized last year’s January 6 hearings misinformed the public about what had taken place.Some experts see the current crises at the network as serious, as it seeks to keep a Trump-loving audience glued to its screens – no matter the cost, and no matter what its executives privately think.“They feel that they have to appease a certain audience they’ve trained to expect a certain kind of information flow. And at the same they see that if you take it too far, you risk serious legal and financial liability – to say nothing of embarrassment that comes when internal communications are exposed,” said Bill Grueskin, a faculty professor at Columbia Journalism School.The news-opinion formula worked for Fox News through the Trump presidency, but in the aftermath of Trump’s election fraud claims and the Capitol riot, it is starting to show signs of strain, Grueskin said.If Fox managers and anchors doubted Trump’s election fraud claims and went along with them to maintain ratings dominance, particularly over other emerging rightwing outlets, their anxieties were confirmed when Fox News viewers fled after it declared Arizona for Joe Biden.“The Murdochs think about this almost exclusively in terms of ratings, audience and money,” said Grueskin. “If they were concerned about Tucker Carlson’s truthfulness, they might have done something about this months or years ago.”And they might be right. After Dominion filed internal Fox News communications last month viewership rose by 2.4%, compared to total viewership for the first full week of February.More so, Carlson likes controversy. He remains hugely powerful, and may be beyond the reach or will of the organization to rein in. He has survived controversies over racist comments and his embracing of tenets of white nationalism.Fox News primetime anchors, particularly Carlson and Hannity, exert so much power in that organization that even the Murdochs have to dance around it, Grueskin said.“It goes beyond Tucker Carlson,” he says. “Rupert Murdoch may be the smartest media person in the world, but you can’t fix this problem they’ve created for themselves.”TopicsFox NewsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2024US elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      Fox News braces for more turbulence as second defamation lawsuit advances

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      Fox News braces for more turbulence as second defamation lawsuit advancesNew York court greenlights $2.7bn suit against news channel by election company Smartmatic over 2020 presidential election liesAs Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation battles to contain the Dominion lawsuit scandal that has engulfed its top executives and stars, another crisis is building in the wings that has the potential to cause further turbulence for the media empire.‘Lachlan’s in the mire’: Fox News case spells trouble for Murdoch heirRead moreSmartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox News has attracted only a fraction of the attention garnered by the legal action of Dominion Voting Systems. Yet both firms are suing Fox for defamation related to its coverage of Donald Trump’s stolen-election lie, and both pose a serious threat to Fox’s finances and reputation.In fact, on paper Smartmatic’s suit appears to be the more dangerous. It’s demanding damages of $2.7bn, compared with Dominion’s $1.6bn.So far, attempts by Fox lawyers to have the Smartmatic case dismissed have fallen on stony ground. Last week the New York state supreme court in Manhattan gave the green light for the case to proceed against Fox News, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, the former business anchor Lou Dobbs and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.Smartmatic, a global election technology company headquartered in London, lodged its defamation suit in February 2021. “The Earth is round,” was the complaint’s striking opening sentence. “Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election … ”The complaint goes on to argue that, contrary to these indisputable facts, Fox News broadcast a series of blatant lies in support of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theory. “Defendants did not want Biden to win the election. They wanted President Trump to win re-election … They also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story.”To prop up that story, the lawsuit claims, Fox needed a villain. That villain was Smartmatic.Smartmatic claims that more than 100 false statements were broadcast by Fox News hosts and guests. Smartmatic was falsely said to have been involved in 2020 election counts in six battleground states – in fact, it was present only at the count in Los Angeles county.Fox broadcast that Smartmatic shared its technology with Dominion, when in fact the two companies had no communication and regarded each other as rivals. Smartmatic was in cahoots with foreign governments in a conspiracy to rig the vote for Biden, Giuliani said on Bartiromo’s show – a claim that the company disputes as false and defamatory.Fox also described Smartmatic as having been founded in Venezuela at the behest of corrupt dictators. In fact, it was founded by Antonio Mugica and Roger Piñate in 2000 in Boca Raton, Florida, in the wake of the “hanging chad” fiasco, with the aim of using technology to restore people’s faith in election results.The business has since grown around the world. The firm claims that it has lost clients as a result of what it calls Fox’s “disinformation campaign”.Fox News has disputed Smartmatic’s multibillion estimate of its losses, calling it vastly inflated.A spokesperson for the broadcaster told the Guardian: “Freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs. There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the US and his lawyers making allegations.”Smartmatic has a very high bar to meet if it is to win the defamation suit at trial. New York state law has a rigorous approach to the first amendment of the US constitution which preserves press freedom.Under it, plaintiffs have to be able to convince a jury that not only did the media outlet put out false information, it did so with “actual malice”. That means that it either knew it was peddling a lie and went ahead anyway, or showed a reckless disregard for the truth.“New York is pretty protective of media rights,” said Roy Gutterman, a media law professor at Syracuse University who was a consultant early on in the Smartmatic case advising a non-party entity. “Every year I read a lot of cases from New York, and it’s hard to be successful in this state.”Despite this tough challenge, so far the wind is in Smartmatic’s sails. David Cohen, the New York supreme court justice presiding over the litigation, has indicated that the company has a strong enough case to go to trial.In last week’s ruling, Cohen found that “at a minimum, Fox News turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims” about Smartmatic. “Plaintiffs have pleaded facts sufficient to allow a jury to infer that Fox News acted with actual malice.”TopicsFox NewsUS elections 2020News CorporationRudy GiulianiMedia businessTV newsnewsReuse this content More