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News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch declined to rein in Fox News hosts who spread false claims of widespread voter fraud in the days after the 2020 election despite privately expressing that he saw little evidence for then-President Donald Trump’s claims and that he found half of them “bulls— and damaging,” according to court documents unsealed Monday.
Fox News was “trying to straddle the line between spewing conspiracy theories on one hand, yet calling out the fact that they are actually false on the other,” Murdoch said in testimony released in the court documents.
Murdoch acknowledged in testimony that some of those hosts, including Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, had done more than just give a platform to baseless claims of voter fraud.
“Yes,” Murdoch said, according to the documents. “They endorsed.”
The filing adds to a growing collection of documents and testimony, including from many other top Fox News and Fox Corp. executives, that details how the cable channel reacted in the hours, days and weeks following the 2020 election — and how those reactions opened the door for baseless claims of election fraud to become a consistent talking point.
The testimony from executives highlight how Fox News calling Arizona for Joe Biden late on election night sparked a viewer backlash that resonated among the company’s executives and high-profile hosts, sparking concerns about what it would mean for its business.
Murdoch, when asked why he continued to allow MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make election fraud claims on Fox News, said it was a business decision. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” Murdoch said, according to the court documents.
Murdoch’s testimony came as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Fox News filed by voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems. The new documents come less than two weeks after an unsealed court filing exposed the communications of many Fox News executives, hosts and producers who saw claims about Dominion to be without merit. They included host Tucker Carlson saying that Sidney Powell was “lying” about voter fraud docs, Rupert Murdoch calling statements by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani “crazy stuff” and “damaging, and Hannity saying he “did not believe it for one second.
