Judge Refuses To Let Fox News Escape Defamation Lawsuit Over Election Lies

Fox News has been trying to get the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against them by Dominion Voting Systems dismissed for quite some time, but a state judge this past week said that isn't going to happen. The judge said that Fox News likely had enough information and evidence to know the claims of fraud were false, yet they went ahead and ran with them anyway. That statement is a huge deal, as Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Fox news is facing a 1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from dominion voting systems. And they have been trying for months now to get courts, to throw out this lawsuit because as Fox news always claims, we got a first amendment baby. And you know, a lot of these things are just opinions anyway, and you can't Sue somebody for defamation. If that's the, their opinion this past week, a state court judge in Delaware said, yeah, I don't buy this. I'm not dismissing your case. This is going to move forward. You're going to be sued. And you're gonna show up in court and explain what happened. And the reasoning that the judge gave for this particular decision should scare the hell outta Fox news because in his decision to not dismiss the case, the judge says Fox news had or should have had enough evidence and information on hand to know that the lies they were spreading about the election were totally false.

That to me means Fox news already lost the case. If even the judge says you had information, you had the evidence or the lack of evidence that showed that these election fraud claims against dominion were totally false, but you went with it anyway, that would show intent. It would show that this was in fact malicious. You know, it's not accidental defamation and look, defamation, slander, libel lawsuits, things like that are some of the hardest cases to actually win because you have to show the actual malice that Fox news or who, whoever it is, that's being sued intentionally knowingly and willfully spread false information to harm the party that they were talking about. And if the judge is already telling us in this ruling, that that is what you did to me, that's a clear sign that Fox news is already lost at this point, the trial that's going to come up now is just a formality. The judge already knows. The judge already said, it's now in an official court ruling that you knew this stuff was false.

So that could be the difference between just negligent reporting and malicious reporting. And yes, there is a world of difference here, negligent. They could still be held liable, right? They're gonna pay some of the, the, the money that dominion is suing them for actual malice. You're gonna pay a whole hell of a lot, right? Fox news has a very slim chance of getting away actual malice. Of course, it's going to depend on the information that dominions lawyers present. And of course, it's going to depend on the information that Fox news lawyers present, but this is a rare chance for a group to actually hold Fox news accountable for defamation. I mean, Fox news has gotten away with this for so many years based on those arguments I mentioned earlier, they go to the courts, they go to the judges and they say, Hey, listen, look, we got a first amendment right here.

We're just asking questions, right? I've talked about that a lot. They always say, we're just asking questions or, Hey, this is an opinion. Or as they did with Tucker Carlson, not long ago, they said, listen, no reasonable person would believe what this guy's saying. So obviously it can't be defamation. And they've won. They've won on those idiotic arguments, but they finally came up against the judge who said, Uhuh, I'm not doing it. I, I'm not gonna throw this out just because one, you think your audience is stupid or your hosts or knowingly liars. I'm not gonna do it based on you just asking questions. And you do not have a first amendment, right. To defame an individual or a company for, for your own personal benefit. This is a huge, important ruling. And again, this is only a preliminary ruling. This was just saying, I'm not dismissing your case. Heaven knows what's gonna happen when this thing finally goes to trial. But I have to imagine based on what the judge said this week, that it's not gonna go very well for Fox news.