April 18, 2023 02:30 PM UTC

Dominion Settles With Fox News Over 2020 Election Lies

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• by: Colorado Pols

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: One of the prime movers of the Dominion conspiracy theory, local gun store owner and wannabe hangman Joe Oltmann, is most displeased with Fox News for settling:

F@ck those shitbags at Dominion and f@ck Fox… listen to this. No question, Fox sold out the American people. F@ck them. I will never stop fighting these liars, terroristic heap radical leftists.

To the extent that Oltmann will be seeing Dominion in court again, that’s true.

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TUESDAY UPDATE #2: The terse statement from Fox: “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

In making the announcement, the network said, “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

We sincerely hope that isn’t all they have to say.

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TUESDAY UPDATE: The New York Times reports that a settlement has been reached between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems over the 2020 presidential election falsehoods promoted by the former about the latter. No word yet on what record-correcting measures are included in this settlement, but Fox is paying up almost $800 million, which says a mouthful by itself:

The judge in the Fox News defamation case said on Tuesday that the case was resolved, abruptly ending a long-running dispute over misinformation in the 2020 election just as a highly anticipated trial was about to begin.

It was a last-minute end to a case that began two years ago and after the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that peeled back the curtain on a media company that has long resisted outside scrutiny. The settlement included a $787.5 million payment from Fox, according to Justin Nelson, a lawyer for Dominion.

Updates coming, stay tuned. To us, not Fox.

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Today was supposed to be the first day of the much-anticipated trial in the defamation case against Fox News from Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, who is seeking over a billion dollars in damages for the network’s knowing promulgation of the “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump in a conspiracy involving Dominion products. But as CNBC reports, the trial was delayed until tomorrow amid rumors of a possible settlement in the works:

In a brief hearing in Delaware Superior Court, Judge Eric Davis said Monday he made the decision to delay the jury selection process and the start of opening statements. News of the delay came Sunday night, just hours before the trial was originally set to begin.

The judge offered little explanation for the postponement. “This is not a press conference, I don’t do that,” Davis told a courtroom that was mostly filled with journalists…

The trial delay came as some news outlets have reported Dominion and Fox are meeting to discuss a possible settlement. Spokespeople for Fox and Dominion have not provided statements about the possibility of settlement talks.

The voluminous documentation leading up to this trial of top Fox News executives and talent acknowledging freely that Trump’s campaign was lying and Trump’s claims of a stolen election were meritless despite continuing to humor their audience convinced otherwise has wrecked what remained of the network’s reputation outside their core group of faithful viewers. What’s more, many of those faithful viewers have been in turn sent packing to even more shameless propaganda mills like Newsmax when Fox failed to deliver the red meat as unequivocally as they demanded. As a result of these competing pressures, Fox News’ viewership (although still the highest-rated cable news network) has dropped about 15% in Q1 of 2023 compared to the previous year.

Dominion has repeatedly stated that their goal is to maximize Fox News’ pain by taking the case to trial and forcing the network’s executives and anchors to testify. The response from the network from the damning discoveries in the Dominion case was Tucker Carlson’s universally-panned attempt to rewrite the history of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as “mostly peaceful chaos,” and most recently welcoming Donald Trump back for softball interviews. Locally, conspiracy theorist and aspiring mass hangman Joe Oltmann, one of the principal agents behind the Dominion conspiracy theory, continues his unrepentant threat-laden misinformation campaign despite his own pending defamation suit.

Although no evidence has ever surfaced to validate any of these contentions about Dominion Voting Systems hardware, the harm done by the lies about this Colorado company is extensive–and not just to the company’s bottom line. In addition to a majority of Republican voters still convinced without evidence that the 2020 election was not decided fairly, former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters faces the possibility of a longer prison sentence than she can expect to naturally live due to her fruitless pursuit of evidence to prove the “Big Lie” was true. Peters’ guileless sincerity that her alleged felony crimes were perfectly justifiable is backed up by a whole culture of election denialism created to service Trump’s denial. Despite her indictments, Peters continues to enjoy star status (and a paycheck) in an executive role at the Colorado Republican Party.

With all of this in mind, it’s not for us to judge whether Dominion should accept a settlement from Fox, especially with no idea what the terms of any such settlement might be. What we will say is that the disclosure Dominion has already extracted from Fox News is devastating to their credibility, and effectively refutes the lie still believed by a majority of Republicans better than anything achievable by another news outlet.

If there is a settlement, every recorded word from their own executives debunking the “Big Lie” uncovered by Dominion’s discovery should play on repeat until every Fox News viewer across the nation has seen it. Fox News must clearly articulate not only that they lied, but that they did so knowingly in order to pander to their radicalized audience. Some of their viewers probably still won’t believe it, and they can’t be helped. But this case is about the truth winning the battle for the historical record.

For Dominion’s sake and American democracy itself, they must not stop until that is achieved.