Documents Add Detail to Fox Hosts' Desire to Help Trump
Several of Fox News's most prominent on-air news personalities made clear their desire to help Mr. Trump shortly before and after the 2020 presidential election, according to a tranche of court documents released on Tuesday in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation filed by Smartmatic, a voting technology company.
In one text message, Mr. Watters, who now hosts 'Jesse Watters Primetime' on Fox News, said to his colleague Greg Gutfeld: 'Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,' a reference to the movement trying to overturn the results of the election.
Ms. Pirro, a former Fox News host who is now the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., under President Trump, told Ronna McDaniel, then the Republican National Committee chair, in a text in the months before the election: 'I work so hard for the President and party.' Ms. Pirro had been pushing for a pardon from Mr. Trump for her ex-husband, Smartmatic argues.
Ms. Bartiromo, a host on Fox Business and Fox News, texted Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump, about the election results on Nov. 12, 2020: 'I want you to overturn this.' (She later testified in a deposition that she had hoped Mr. Trump would win in the election, and had wanted to see evidence of cheating from Mr. Giuliani and for the election to be overturned if that was uncovered.)
The hundreds of pages of documents — largely newly unredacted versions of previously released ones — were filed on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. Smartmatic has accused Fox News of knowingly implicating the company in false claims of vote-rigging in the 2020 election.
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