Fox settles with Dominion
To the tune of $787.5 million.
I’m with Scott Johnson here:
The settlement paid by Fox appears to represent the value of Dominion several times over (“like 20x”).
The amount of the settlement must be well beyond any reasonable assessment of Dominion’s actual damages, if any. It either includes a component of punitive damages exposure — an exposure that I have seen mentioned nowhere and may or may not have been in the case — or reflects Fox’s desire to avoid the embarrassment of trial. Absent any authoritative analysis of the settlement — the terms of which remain private as I write — my best guess is that $787.5 million was the price of avoiding embarrassment.
Extraordinary.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems,” Fox News officials said in a statement after an agreement had been reached. “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
“We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues,” the statement said.
In the post I just linked, Professor Jacobson explains:
The Judge granted summary judgment to Dominion that the statements about their systems being rigged were false. That wasn’t the issue in the trial, the issue was whether Fox News had a right to air the allegations on issues of public importance (and contrary opinions also were aired).
It’s not as though this is the first time networks have aired false statements. Au contraire. But these particular statements were about a company with quite a bit of money, that sued a company – Fox – that seems to have wanted to settle.
Do I sense that this egregious “settlement” reflects the control of Fox by the younger heirs? Who both of whom love the Democrats?
I see this as being a huge and calamitous win by those forces in this country who wish to completely obliterate the basis for our representative republic.
Is T J correct? Maybe.
No-one should necessarily trust the Murdochs or the board at Fox (or, even, some of the hosts at Fox). What remains irrefutable is that Fox hired a leftist pollster who called Arizona in 2020 much too soon, Dominion (shell-company within shell-company, with an opaque corporate structure) has been regarded, in the past, by many as questionable in its efficiency, that no-one in the MSM has ever truly been held to account for the worst, and by far the most damaging, political hoax of the last fifty years (Russia-gate), and that it was completely legitimate to have discussions on Fox in November 2020 of the many “problematic” issues surrounding an election which was neither “free nor fair”. Who will be discussing any of this, in a rational manner, in our corrupt media?
@T J:Who both of whom love the Democrats?
I’m not sure what kind of love results in this much money changing hands, and skeptical that this is the reason. Interesting to see what Dominion does with it and perhaps the money’s final destination could shed some light on whether the settlement was done for this reason or not.
as I included in my link up thread, there was plenty of evidence, albeit circumstantial about flaws in dominion systems, but Rupert is willing to take a fall, or whoever is actually running the network
the stream of dezinforma about past elections and current ones and future ones from cnn msnbc, the tribune gannett, times journal et al, is rather extraordinary,
I figure Fox didn’t think discovery would absolve them–insufficient facts which could not be waved away. Or they figured that, given the venue, facts wouldn’t matter.
It was going to be a rigged trial. Now, I wish FoxNews had contested the lawsuit- I think they would have ultimately prevailed given how open the bias of the judge was, but they chose to put it behind them for whatever reasons.
Richard Aubrey: “Or they figured that, given the venue, facts wouldn’t matter.”
Yep. This was probably the right way to go, financially speaking. It’s sad. Dominion is a corrupt company. That’s clear just from the way they are organized.
IMO they sealed Dominion’s golden status. No one will say anything again against Dominion for a long time. The vote fraud potential is safe again from any prying eyes and will double down in 2024.
Any findings of such would have proved Sundowner was installed and a fraud, that wouldn’t have ever been allowed to be shown.
Devil’s advocate: Fox tried to manipulate the elections by getting Dominion machine counted voted tossed out, failed, and now pays the price.
True? Probably as true as anything else “rumoured” about the 2020 elections. But fits the sequence of events better than most such “rumours”.
They should have known better than to state unsubstantiated rumours as facts. Which yes, all “news” agencies do all the time. But most “news” agencies add statements to the effect that these are unconfirmed rumours and claims, Fox didn’t.
My understanding is that the judge denied all defense motions and Fox was facing a one sided trial in a Biden owned State. I do agree that this opened the door to massive fraud in 2024.
Fox threw the match, took a dive. Expect to see Dominion “donate” a Big chunk of that to left leaning GOTV groups.
If the evidence of Dominion corruption was out there, Fox News can’t claim that it was too expensive to find it. $787 billion will buy a lot of investigation and/or finance a lot of discovery.
The Dominion thing is a perfect illustration of how Trump hurts the right. There were many legitimate problems with the 2020 election, but Dominion servers secretly changing votes was (almost certainly) not one of them. Yet, when the narrative of the 2020 election is set, the allegations that will be remembered are things like this.
The Murdoch family is anti Trump, especially the younger generation, and Fox even has Paul Ryan on the board.
The Judge was very anti fox and there was a risk of going to trial of more money and huge embarrassment, and discovery and depositions would have been horrible. A lawyer joked recently, “gargling with hot tar was preferable to being in a lawsuit”.
So Fox / Murdoch family and insurance took the easier path, which helped the Left and hurt Trump.
I wish they had fought tooth and nail, with appeals left and right up to Scotus. The decision actually hurts the US.
My gut feeling via the Dominion Machines are not secure. We need to go back to paper ballots that are harder to hack.
My guess is that they settled to avoid having their contempt for their Right-leaning audience made public in discovery.
Insurance and tax deductions offset the majority of the settlement.
likely from what raheem kassam released about the dominion whistleblower, actual evidence instead of opinions from people who had no such basis for criticism,
but Dominion servers secretly changing votes was (almost certainly) not one of them
This assertion has not been established as fact. And we’ll never know for sure because the settlement is secret.
I have not been able to find a conclusion which seems solid. Can Dominion machines be connected to other devices? If so, ipse dixit (no idea what that means but it just occurred to me) they are not secure and cannot be made secure, all the IT argle-bargle about systems and firewalls and any other vocabulary familiar to those who know about such things means…squat. Even if true, there’s no way to convince the even mildly conscious that it’s true now, will be true and never wasn’t true.
If both sides embraced the same political beliefs and were aligned on principles, could this be called Money Laundering?
Hard to imagine such an exhorbitant number being arrived at by a contentious process via engagement of opposing, mutually-hostile sides – however well represented they are.
The problem is not whether or not a particular machine is secure it is whether people will believe the result. There was a big contingent of Democrats that blamed Diebold for Bush being elected. A lot of Republicans in 2020 wanted to blame Dominion. The problem is that the process is invisible and therefore suspect especially if you don’t believe the outcome. I think a major thing that would reduce distrust would be preprinted ballots voted and counted in smaller districts. It would make the necessary collusion to throw a race much larger scale and thus harder to believe.
Democrat politicians were saying years ago that Dominion machines could be hacked. The Fox hosts should have pointed out that this was just a possibility, and that it wasn’t a proven fact that the machines had been hacked in 2020. If they had done that, or if they had made it clear to Trump’s lawyers that they couldn’t present theories as facts, I think they would have been alright. Then again, it seems like the judge was so anti-Trump that any precautions Fox took would have been ignored or minimized.
Martin
Agree.
as pointed out in earlier links there was a long string of assertions, not just by crackpots like stacey abrams, who are allowed to grift continuously and pretend she won in 2018