Voting machine company Dominion Voting Services has made a massive amount of data public in their defamation case against Fox News, and Marcy Wheeler notes that Jack Smith and the DoJ have every reason to be poring over a copy.
As you read through Dominion’s motion for summary judgment against Fox News — and trust me, you should read it! — keep in mind not just how it proves Fox to be nothing but a propaganda platform aiming to help the Republican Party, but also the evidence it makes available to Jack Smith as he considers charges against those who used false claims about voting fraud to gin up a coup attempt.
Just as one example, Sean Hannity has played a role in every Trump legal scandal — serving as a back channel to Trump for Paul Manafort, participating in Rudy Giuliani’s attempts to gin up dirt on Hunter Biden as the first impeachment unfolded, and helping White House officials stave off the resignations of Trump’s White House Counsels in advance of January 6. But in each case, investigators only got his communications via other subjects of the investigation, as when DOJ found Manafort’s WhatsApp texts to Hannity saved in Manafort’s iCloud account or when the January 6 Committee got Signal texts Hannity exchanged with Mark Meadows from the former Chief of Staff’s production. Republicans chose not to call Hannity as a pro-Trump witness in the Ukraine impeachment.
With its filing, Dominion has given a snapshot of the ways and whys in which Fox News helped magnify false voter fraud claims, especially (though not exclusively) those of Sidney Powell.
It all takes place against the backdrop of a huge backlash against Fox after it called AZ for Joe Biden. When Fox presented the truth about the election, viewers started fleeing to Newsmax, with Trump’s encouragement. The filing describes the panic that ensued.
Fox News had to continually play up Trump's false voting machine fraud claims in Arizona, or the network was done. They knew they had to lie to stay in business.
For over two years, the right wing has squealed about a media outlet prohibiting the dissemination of dodgy claims from a Murdoch outlet. It turns out that Murdoch was, in that same time period, “censoring” true facts about Trump’s dodgy claims.
I wait with bated breath for James Comer to scheduled a hearing on the “censorship.”
Tucker Carlson, especially, recognized Trump’s role in this. He warned that Trump “could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.
“What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”After January 6, Tucker called Trump,”a demonic force, a destroyer.”
Fox appears to have perceived that they had to play along with Trump’s false claims or risk permanent damage to their brand.
They lied and deliberately cast Dominion as fraudsters, criminals, and as dangers to democracy in a massive conspiracy to "steal" the election. They lied for months about it, and it helped lead to the January 6th terrorist insurrection.
Jack Smith now has reams of texts and communications between Fox News talking heads like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and the Trump legal team, and it's only going to help his case.
We’ve long known that Fox was better understood as a wing of the Republican party than as a news organization (indeed, the filing describes Rupert Murdoch looking for ways to “help[] any way we can” in Georgia).
But this filing makes it clear that in a bid to cater to viewers who were fed false claims by Trump, Fox played right along with the false claims that would lead to insurrection. Jack Smith is already examining multiple parts of this effort. This filing makes evidence that would otherwise be unavailable accessible to prosecutors.
Fox News knew their platforming of Trump’s false claims was doing damage to the country. And they did it anyway.
Sure sounds like elements of a deliberate criminal conspiracy to overthrow the US government. That's sedition, kids. And Dominion just dropped a metric ton of evidence to help prove it.
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