Fox News forced to correct legal scholar over humiliating and debunked election error claim

A legal scholar on Fox News attempted to spew a debunked claim about election errors on Friday, and even the network's conservative anchors had to stop him in his tracks.

On Friday, Jonathan Turley, who famously defended the president during impeachment, appeared on Fox & Friends where he discussed a false theory surrounding the Dominion voting machines. According to Turley, "thousands" of President Donald Trump's votes in Michigan were switched to President-elect Joe Biden in Michigan — another claim the president is pushing to undermine his election defeat to his Democratic opponent.

Turley claimed the software had been used in multiple states including "half of the districts in Michigan" as he suggested that the "vulnerable" software may have impacted the outcome of the election. He made clear he believed mistakes may be the result of "human error."

However, a Fox News co-host pushed back as he noted that he also researched Trump's claim. He explained that the glitch did not impact or compromise the vote count in any way. Like Trump's arguments, Turley's claims were also confirmed to be unfounded.

Turley's Fox appearance comes just one day after Trump tweeted a baseless theory about the Dominion voting software. Trump claimed hundreds of thousands of votes had been stolen from him despite having no evidence to support his assertions.

Almost immediately after the president tweeted about the conspiracy, his allies and supporters followed suit. The New York Times and other fact-checkers quickly released a report striking down the allegations. Election technology expert, Edward Perez, also pushed back against the claims as he condemned the spreading of misinformation.

"Many of the claims being asserted about Dominion and questionable voting technology is misinformation at best and, in many cases, they're outright disinformation," said Perez. "I'm not aware of any evidence of specific things or defects in Dominion software that would lead one to believe that votes had been recorded or counted incorrectly."

Even Trump's own administration has flatly debunked these false claims.

"There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," officials said in a statement.

Editor's note: After publication, Turley reached out to AlterNet to dispute the characterization of his claims. This story has been updated to reflect the fact that he did not specifically allege a "conspiracy" when made claims about unintentional election errors.