Fox 'absolutely knew' they were lying — and Dominion is about to secure a huge victory: legal expert

Fox News continues to vehemently deny the allegations made against them in Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion lawsuit against their network, claiming that they were only trying to report both sides of a controversy.

But to the contrary, argued former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" on Tuesday, Dominion has ample evidence that Fox was willfully spreading false information, putting on claims they rigged the 2020 presidential election while executives and top on-air personalities privately admitted to knowing it was all false. And this, she said, is a degree of evidence you don't usually see in defamation cases.

"I want to understand, Joyce, what the significance is, again, of Sidney Powell was only on TV because she was peddling the lie that these hosts knew to be just that, a lie," said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "They also understand that their viewers believed it. How do those sorts of peeks into their inner understanding of the facts play as this lawsuit goes forward?"

"So this is absolutely the key point in this lawsuit for Fox. This is the hurdle that they face," said Vance. "So the defamation here would be Fox defamation of Dominion and their voting machines, not their perpetration of the Big Lie. But ultimately, it's just one big ball of wax, because if the Big Lie isn't true, then the claims against Dominion aren't true. And in a libel case where you have a public figure as the plaintiff — and for better or worse, the courts have decided that little Dominion Voting Machines is a public figure — they have to prove that Fox acted with actual malice. That the statements that Fox made were made with knowledge of their falsity, or with reckless disregard for their truth."

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"Usually when you have this sort of a defamation case, you're in that reckless disregard sort of prong," said Vance. However, "that is not what is going on here. The evidence that Dominion has is that Fox absolutely knew that it wasn't true, that their internal communications proved that ... a long time ago in Washington, D.C. as a young lawyer, I participated in a defamation case involving Pat Robertson, who was then a presidential candidate, and this burden of proof was so high, this need that he had to prove that the people who he said had defamed him, had acted with actual malice. And the burden is even higher than in most civil lawsuits whereas we know from your explanations daily, the burden of proof is usually the preponderance of the evidence. But here for actual malice, it is clear and convincing evidence, it is something that almost approaches the standard in the criminal justice system, you just don't see that in these sorts of defamation cases."

"Here at Dominion, I think it has it," Vance added. "These internal communications make it very clear that they knew there was falsity. That they acted with actual malice. The only thing left for anyone to decide is damages. You don't see that in these cases. I think we might see it as to some claims here."

Watch video below or at this link.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP2OTDXxo40&feature=youtu.be expand=1 site_id=20266338] Joyce Vance discusses Dominion's defamation casewww.youtube.com