The court documents in the Dominion defamation lawsuit against Fox News were released online Monday and exposed some of the conversations that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch had with Republicans about the 2020 election lies.
One of those conversations was with then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who remained largely silent during the two-month period between the November election and the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
"Rupert also called Mitch McConnell immediately after the election, and thought it was 'probably true' that during that call Rupert 'urged him to ask other senior Republicans to refuse to endorse Mr. Trump's conspiracy theories and baseless claims of fraud," the court documents reveal.
McConnell never dispelled Trump's lies publicly before the Jan. 6 attack.
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"For five weeks, McConnell had declined to say that Biden defeated Trump, even joking about the 'weekly ritual' he conducted with reporters questioning him on the election results," reported Politico at the time. "But after the Electoral College met on Monday to make Biden’s win official and a number of his members acknowledged to reporters that Trump lost, McConnell made his move."
"The whole thing has been a delicate balancing act to hold our base together for Georgia,” said a Republican senator.
Behind the scenes, McConnell was telling his senators not to join the House GOP members like Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) in challenging the election on Jan. 6. Instead, Republican senators lined up to protest accepting the 2020 election results.
Meanwhile, Murdoch was giving a platform to people like Mike Lindell, he said because the network wanted his advertising dollars. There was also a serious concern that because Fox made the election call for Arizona, the network was losing its audience. So, the top network executives discussed giving election deniers a platform as a means of getting those viewers back.