Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corp, is scheduled to give testimony on Monday in a $1.6bn lawsuit which alleges the Murdochs and their media company allowed Fox News to amplify false claims that a voting machine company rigged the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
CNBC reported that Murdoch, the son of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, will appear for a deposition in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News, which is owned by Fox Corp.
In the $1.6bn lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox Corp, and the Murdochs specifically, of allowing Fox News to amplify false claims that the voting company had rigged the election for Joe Biden.
Dominion originally filed the lawsuit against Fox News in June 2021. The suit argues that Fox News “sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process”.
The suit was originally against Fox News then a judge ruled in June that Fox Corp can be included in the suit.
Fox Corp had attempted to have the suit dismissed, but a Delaware judge said Dominion, which provided voting machines to 28 states, had shown adequate evidence for the suit to proceed. Dominion was already suing OAN and Newsmax.
“These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion,” Judge Eric Davis said.
Some of Fox News’ biggest on-air hosts, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, were deposed earlier this year.
The Washington Post reported in August that Dominion’s lawyers had obtained emails and text messages sent by Fox employees, “some of which it claimed in one filing provided ‘evidence that Fox knew the lies it was broadcasting about Dominion were false’.”
In a statement at the time Fox News said: “We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis.”
