Messages from Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and other Fox News hosts revealed this week show that – despite giving voice to 2020 presidential election fraud claims on-air – they found those claims hard to believe.
“F***ing lunatics,” said a Dec. 22, 2020 excerpt attributed to Hannity, per documents provided by The New York Times. He was apparently referring to politician and lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has made frequent claims about election fraud.
Election deniers have claimed that President Joe Biden won against former President Donald Trump due to election fraud, though no evidence of fraud has been uncovered.
“The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing made public on Thursday in a defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems,” said the outlet.
During a Nov. 5, 2020 show, Hannity said “it will be impossible to ever know the true, fair, accurate election results, that’s a fact,” and he also had Powell on his show later that month. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, discussed conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems, corruption, and a plot to steal the election from former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Previously, The New York Times reported that Hannity said under oath that he “did not believe it for one second,” the claims in testimony for Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
In a video released this week titled “Hannity admits it: He knew Trump lied as legal earthquake rocks Fox News empire,” MSNBC host Ari Melber said there has been “very bad news from judges” for Fox related to lawsuits against the media giant this week.
Documents provided Thursday by the New York Times also featured quotes from other Fox hosts that are apparently linked to the election fraud allegations. They include “ludicrous” from Carlson and “kooky” from Maria Bartiromo.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson wrote to fellow Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020, said the Times.
“Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” said Ingraham.
In addition to Powell and Giuliani, Trump also made frequent claims about voter fraud both before and after the election results came in.
“Despite massive Voter Fraud and Irregularities during the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, that we are now seeing play out in very big and important States, I never threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government,” he said in a statement cited by Audacy in 2021.
The Times said that messages from Fox, a powerful player in conservative news, show that “doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims ‘really crazy stuff.’”
Per the Times, the Dominion case is headed to a jury trial in April.
Related
Related
