Smoking Gun Emails Likely Killed Fox News' Defamation Lawsuit Defense

Emails uncovered during the discovery process as part of Dominion Voting Systems' lawsuit against Fox News may force the network to settle as quickly as possible. The emails show that a producer was so concerned about the lies and conspiracy theories the hosts were pushing about the 2020 election that they begged the network to pull at least one host - Jeanine Pirro - off the air. This could easily be the smoking gun in this case, as Farron Cousins explains.

Don't forget to like, comment, and share! And subscribe to stay connected!

Connect with Farron on Twitter

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

You know, the best part about Fox news, not being able to get the defamation lawsuit against them filed by dominion voting systems dismissed. The best part of course, is that we get to go through the discovery process, which means internal documents, communications, text messages, and of course, emails from the network are now in the hands of dominion voting systems. And one of those emails has apparently been leaked to the press that shows that at least one producer at Fox news was sounding the alarm bells in late 2020, about one of the hosts who continued to spread conspiracy theories about dominion voting systems that host of course, was Janine PIRO. And in the email obtained by dominion voting systems first reported by NPR that producer told executives or the higher ups at Fox news, unequivocally that Janine Perro needed to not be on the air anymore. Because as that producer pointed out, she was pulling conspiracy theories off the internet. In order to bolster Donald Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which in fact it was not, I don't know if you ever get a smoking gun per se, in a defamation case, but if you do this, is it because what dominion voting systems has to prove is that Fox news knowingly spread false information.

That's exactly what this email does. This email proves that people at the network understood that this was false and that the higher ups were aware of it and that they did nothing to stop it. Um, recently of course you had Fox news host, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobb, Sean Hannity, Dobbs is no longer with the network. Uh, they all just sit for depositions. I believe PIRO did as well. And this coming Thursday. So tomorrow, uh, Maria Barar Romo is gonna have to sit for a deposition as well. This is not going well for Fox news at all. And as I've repeatedly said, the remarkable thing about this is that Fox news has a phenomenal track record of winning defamation cases. You know, they have gone to court and argued that Tucker Carlson wouldn't be taken seriously by any rational person. And they won using that argument. They can't use that here because their own emails show that this may have been malicious. Okay. I don't see any way that Fox news wriggles their way out of this mess that they have now created for themselves.

The only thing I wish is that the individual hosts were the ones that had to pay the price, right? Not just the network, they got tons of money. They're gonna be fine. I think the hosts should have to pay the ultimate price here in terms of literally the dollar amount, 1.6 billion. If Janine PIRO was told by her producer that what you're doing is false and she didn't listen. And then that producer goes to the higher ups and says, listen, I've confronted her. I have talked about these things. Nobody's listening to me, but we all know it's all fake then. Yeah. PIRO should have to pay, literally pay for her role in this thing. Now what's probably gonna happen, especially now that this email is public and everybody gets to see that Fox news has absolutely no legal defenses left because they don't. They truly do not.

They are screwed. What's probably gonna happen is that Fox is gonna be working overtime to try to get dominion, to settle. They know they're not gonna win this. And they sure as hell don't want to go through more discovery because discovery hasn't been going on by the way, for all that long. And if we've already basically got the smoking gun, imagine what else is in there. Fox news probably wants to put a lid on this as quickly and quietly as possible. And so to dominion voting systems in your lawyers, I say this don't do it no matter what number they come at you with, don't do it. Get to the bottom of all of this expose all of these little cockroaches at Fox news, you have the ability to do it. You have the ability to win this case on the merits. You also might take down a lot of the stars at the network and the process. So don't give in, do not settle because this case is far more important than just a little bit of defamation.