Former Attorney General William Barr has been subpoenaed to testify in an ongoing defamation lawsuit brought against Fox News over false claims made about the 2020 election, ABC News reports.
The lawsuit, brought by Dominion Voting Systems, also brought about the subpoena of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who Trump famously called after the 2020 election asking to help him "find" the exact number of votes he needed to win the state. Dominion alleges in its $1.6 billion suit that Fox pushed false accusations that the voting tech company had rigged the 2020 election.
"Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process," Dominion said in its complaint.
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During his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, Barr said claims that Dominion voting machines switched votes from Joe Biden to Trump were "complete nonsense" and "amongst the most disturbing."
"I told them it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on it, and they were doing a great disservice to the country," Barr said of the Dominion conspiracy theories, which were consistently pushed by Trump and his allies. "I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people."
In a statement, a spokesperson for Fox New said: "We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs.”
