Text messages reveal how hard Fox News 'worked' for Trump in 2020: court documents

New court documents reveal Fox News’ most prominent on-air news personalities made clear their desire to help President Donald Trump win the 2020 presidential election, according to The New York Times.

A $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation by voting technology company Smartmatic upended a tranche of documents on Tuesday showing Fox personalities Jeanine Pirro, Jesse Watters and Maria Bartiromo were determined to help Trump. In one text message, Watters — now host of “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News, said to host Greg Gutfeld: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,” a reference to a disinformation campaign to overturn the results of the election.

The Times reports Pirro, a Fox News host who is now the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., under Trump, told Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel in a text in the months preceding the 2020 election that: “I work so hard for the President and party.”

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Smartmatic claims Pirro had been pushing for a pardon from Trump for her ex-husband.

The documents also reveal a text from Bartiromo to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani pertaining to the Nov. 12, 2020 election results saying: “I want you to overturn this.”

Smartmatic argues that Fox News faced a viewer backlash after calling Arizona for Joe Biden, and seized upon a narrative about election fraud to save its viewership, despite knowing the claims were untrue. Smartmatic is accusing Fox News of knowingly implicating it, along with another company, Dominion Voting Systems, in false claims of vote-rigging in the 2020 election in its effort to save its viewership.

The Times reports the internal communications from Smartmatic’s case show Fox executives, including owner Rupert Murdoch, became increasingly concerned about the audience reaction to its election coverage. According to the filings, Murdoch said in an email to Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott in the days after the election: “Getting creamed by CNN! Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.”

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But Murdoch and others did not believe the voter fraud claims, according to emails and text messages from the filings.

Dominion also sued Fox for defamation in a similarly-styled case and settled their case for $787.5 million in 2023.

Fox attorneys told the Times that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were already suffering prior to the election and that Smartmatic “grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech.”

Both Smartmatic and Fox News have asked the judge to rule on the case without a trial. Judge David B. Cohen is expected to issue his decision in the coming months.

Read the full New York Times report at this link.