Ongoing defamation case puts Rupert Murdoch and Fox News on defense again: Former federal prosecutor
There was ultimately a settlement between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox Corp. for their role in defaming the company, but it came after weeks of brutal court documents revealing some of the most scandalous and vengeful texts and emails from the dark corners of the network. They were so bad that the network decided they were "unsurvivable" for host Tucker Carlson.
Now, another one is about to begin.
A former federal prosecutor and Alabama Law School Professor Joyce White Vance called the upcoming Smartmatic suit fascinating in part because, unlike Dominion, their company was only operating in Los Angeles County.
"So, there was literally no way they influenced the outcome of the election, even if everything said about them on Fox was true, but it's not true, and it's going to be a fascinating case in term of what shakes out from it," she explained.
MSNBC host Ari Melber noted that it isn't easy to win a defamation case, "and it's not supposed to be," but in this case, it's very clear to see what Melber called "a noncourt" term "B.S."
He played a clip of the Smartmatic lawyer explaining that the company was only in LA county, "yet you have Fox publishing night after night that we were switching votes and rigging elections in states where we weren't even there. Now, that's a level of recklessness that you will almost never see. Because the ability to figure out that we were not even there takes one minute on Google. So, yes, we're going to have the parade of emails. Yes, we're going to have the parade of text messages, that we're all familiar with already, but I have a degree of recklessness here that I don't think I've ever seen before."
Not mentioned by the lawyer, but he's also subpoenaed former President Donald Trump in the case.
Vance said he's "dead on the money" with his assessment, not merely because he's the lawyer for Smartmatic but because he has the facts on his side.
"You know, in a defamation case, the whole issue is what's called actual malice, proving that the false statements were either made with extreme recklessness or actual knowledge of their falsity," she explained. "He said it's recklessness he'll end up being able to prove they knew the statements they were putting out for false, and that makes for a killer defamation case no matter how you cut it."
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