Judge rejects Fox Corp's bid to kill Dominion suit — says Murdochs may have been in on spreading falsehoods

According to Bloomberg News, Fox Corp. has once again lost a motion to dismiss the defamation suit levied against them by Dominion Voting Systems — and this time, the judge presiding over the case made it clear that the Murdoch family themselves may have been in on knowingly spreading the false attacks against them.

"Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis on Tuesday denied Fox Corp.’s motion to dismiss the suit, saying Dominion Voting Systems had shown that the Murdochs may have been on notice that the conspiracy theory that rigged voting machines tilted the vote was false but let Fox News broadcast it anyway," reported Erik Larson and Mike Leonard. "Dominion cited in its suit a report that Rupert Murdoch spoke with Trump a few days after the election 'and informed him that he had lost,' the judge noted."

This is the latest of multiple efforts by Fox Corp. to have the suit dismissed; in December, Davis dismissed another such motion.

"Davis noted in his ruling that, according to Dominion’s suit, various news outlets reported that Rupert Murdoch spoke with Trump and other senior Republicans shortly after the election and urged them to drop their election-fraud narrative and concede defeat. The voting-technology firm was also able to point to a claim that Murdoch urged a Republican leader to ask other politicians in the party not to endorse Trump’s false theory about Dominion, the judge said," said the report. "The ruling is the latest by a judge allowing defamation suits to proceed against conservative news outlets and Trump allies who allegedly repeated the false theory extensively on-air — a theory that ultimately helped trigger the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot."

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As the report notes, proving defamation against a media outlet requires an extremely high bar of evidence — the plaintiff must establish not only that the claims against them were false and injurious to their reputation, but that the defendant knew the information was false or else acted with a reckless disregard for what they knew or didn't know to be true.

In addition to Dominion, Fox Corp. also faces a $2.7 billion defamation suit from Smartmatic, another elections equipment company. A Dominion employee is separately suing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for naming him as a supposed mastermind of switching votes in the 2020 election.

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