(PatriotWise.com) — Dominion Voting Systems, the company whose systems were used in the 2020 Presidential election is suing Fox News for defamation and demanding $1.6 billion in compensation. Some lawyers are suggesting that the future of the network is in jeopardy and may not survive the lawsuit. Rival outlets, including CNN, have been gathering top attorneys to speak out against Fox and to emphasize its precarious position to American viewers. CNN spoke to noted First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams who said Fox will have “major problems” in exercising Constitutional protections in its defense.
Dominion argues that Fox was guilty of promoting Donald Trump’s theory that the election had been stolen and had damaged their business as a result. In a Tweet immediately after the election in 2020, Trump stated that “Dominion deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.” Fox is now accused of agreeing with the former president and endorsing that statement. In a damning development, the owner of the network, Rupert Murdoch, has said that he agrees with Dominion and claims that Fox hosts did in fact suggest that voting fraud had taken place.
CNN has gleefully covered the story and says that the “dishonesty” of Fox has been revealed with a series of emails and text messages sent just after the election. Papers filed with the lawsuit claim that Fox’s biggest stars Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity all privately mocked Trump’s fraud claims, while publicly giving them credibility.
In its defense, Fox has issued a statement saying, “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution.” The network also said it did not promote or endorse Trump’s claims but merely reported them.
To win its case, Dominion will need to prove that presenters knew that the claims of fraud were false but validated them anyway.
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