Lawyers representing Dominion Voting Systems unearthed a message from Fox News' Maria Bartiromo in which she expresses a distaste for talking about having a peaceful transition of power to President Joe Biden for fear of alienating Trump-loving viewers.
Dominion's lengthy court filing released this week highlighted a text message sent to Bartiromo from producer Abby Grossberg in which she said, "To be honest, our audience doesn't want to hear about a peaceful transition" on the grounds that "they still have hope" of Trump remaining in power.
"Yes, agree," the Fox News host wrote back.
The messages unearthed by Dominion have revealed that many Fox News hosts did not believe many of former President Donald Trump's false claims about the 2020 election being "stolen" from them, and yet they either continued promoting these claims or refused to push back for fear of losing their audience to networks such as Newsmax and One America News, neither of whom had any qualms about peddling election falsehoods.
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Fox News has pushed back against Dominion's claims, however, and has accused the firm of "cherry picking" quotes to make the network appear deceptive.
"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 and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan," Fox said in an official statement.