Fox News has reached a settlement with a Venezuelan businessman who sued the right-wing network for making false claims about his involvement in the 2020 presidential election.
Court documents, filed in the Southern District of New York, show that the Rupert Murdoch-owned network and businessman Majed Khalil settled the defamation lawsuit on Saturday.
The terms of the settlement have not been released.
“This matter has been resolved amicably by both sides,” a spokesperson for Fox News said in a statement. “We have no further comment.”
Mr Khalil sued Fox News and one of its former hosts Lou Dobbs over statements made about him after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
Both on air and on Twitter, Mr Dobbs and Fox News’ guest and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell had falsely accused Mr Khalil of playing a key role in rigging the election against Mr Trump.
In one tweet, Mr Dobbs urged his viewers to “get familiar with” Mr Khalil and three other individuals as the orchestrators of what he described as a “cyber Pearl Harbor”.
Multiple investigations – including by Mr Trump allies – uncovered no widespread fraud in the election.
Mr Dobbs was taken off air at the network in February 2021.
The settlement with Mr Khalil comes just days before jury selection is set to begin in a separate – and historic – $1.6bn defamation case brought against the right-wing network.
Dominion Voting Systems has accused Fox News of pushing pro-Trump conspiracy theories of voter fraud including claiming that its ballot counting technology rigged the 2020 presidential election against the one-term president.
The voting machine company said the network “recklessly disregarded the truth”.
Fox News has denied the allegations and claimed the lawsuit threatens the First Amendment right.
Jury selection is set to begin on Thursday in the case with opening statements scheduled for 17 April.
The trial has already proven a major embarrassment for Fox News, with documents so far handed over as part of the lawsuit revealing that Fox News’ biggest hosts and right-wing figures privately dismissed Mr Trump’s claims about the election being stolen in bombshell texts and emails – all the while pushing the conspiracies on air to their viewers.
However, this embarrassment looks set to escalate further as a judge ruled that some of the network’s top executives and hosts could be called to testify in the trial.
The network did get one small win last week when the judge ruled that testimony about the January 6 Capitol riot cannot be included in the trial.
It is still possible that the two sides will reach a settlement before the case heads to trial.
Both sides had asked for a pretrial ruling in their favour but the judge instead decided the case should head to trial.
