Newly unsealed documents from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit shows Fox News chief Rupert Murdoch helped Donald Trump's campaign with unreported contributions.
Delaware superior court judge Eric M. Davis unsealed evidence, including Murdoch's deposition, showing the network patriarch gave Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner confidential information about a Joe Biden ad, along with debate strategy, but Fox News fired back in a statement to The Daily Beast the assistance had not been improper or unusual.
“Mr. Murdoch forwarded an already-publicly available Biden campaign ad which was available on YouTube and had even run on public airwaves,” the statement read.
The network's statement also claimed that Dominion had been “caught red handed” placing “distortions and misinformation” in its billion-dollar defamation suit, which Fox argued was intended to “trample on free speech and freedom of the press.”
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Fox did not respond to initial reports last week about the Murdoch-Kushner contacts, which prompted a pair of complaints with the Federal Election Commission, and the network did not identify which Biden ad the statement referenced or clarify any other elements in its response.
“It’s Rupert Murdoch’s own words and acknowledgement,” said Angelo Carusone, whose Media Matters for America filed one of the FEC complaints. “I would add that it’s a little weird that this is what Fox News’ PR shop is choosing to focus on tonight given the tome documenting Fox misdeeds that have been exposed.”
A spokesperson for End Citizens United, which filed the other FEC complaint, did not respond to a request for comment, but an official with the campaign finance watchdog Documented said there wasn't enough evidence about the Biden ad to determine how valuable Murdoch's help was to Trump's campaign.
“Murdoch himself admits that he was trying to help the Trump campaign," said Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of Undocumented. "But if all Murdoch did was share a publicly available Biden ad, then he’s not providing much of value."
The unsealed deposition shows Murdoch initially denied sharing what he acknowledged was an unreleased Biden ad with Kushner, but he seemed to change his answer when Dominion attorneys showed him an email chain where the two had discussed the comparative quality of the two campaigns' ads and when they would be run on a Sunday NFL broadcast.
“He’s a friend of mine,” Murdoch said, when asked whether his assistance was "appropriate" for a network chief.
Murdoch also conceded he was "trying to help the Trump campaign by giving him a preview of the Biden campaign’s ads," which legal experts say was almost certainly an impermissible in-kind corporate contribution, but it's nearly impossible to determine how valuable the assistance was, and the FEC determines penalties based on monetary value.
The deposition also shows Murdoch admitted to offering feedback on Trump's debate strategy, saying the former president "must not look like a bully" in the next debate, but he denied offering anything more specific to Kushner and characterized his assistance as "advice from a friend to a friend."
“I only remember myself being horrified at Mr. Trump’s behavior in the first debate,” Murdoch said.
Murdoch also admitted to passing along a tip that "more stuff on Biden" might be coming before the upcoming debate, and while he told Dominion's attorneys that he couldn't specifically recall what he meant he conceded it could have been a now-infamous report in another media outlet he owns.
“Unless I was talking about the New York Post and Hunter Biden,” he said.
