Hundreds of pages of court documents have been unsealedas part of Dominion’s defamation suit, which accuses Fox News of pushing fraud claims involving its voting machines after the 2020 election despite knowing those claims were false.
Anchor Tucker Carlson, who’s now coming under fire for downplaying the January 6 attacks, said in court filings the Dominion fraud claims were “insane” and “absurd” and said far-right attorney Sidney Powell, who pushed the claims, was “poison,” an “unguided missile” and “dangerous as hell” and he “hope[s]
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she’s punished.”Carlson also said he “had to make” the Trump Administration disavow Powell’s comments, calling her a “nut,” and said in a text message, “Sidney Powell is lying” and called her a “f–king b-tch.”
Carlson called former President Donald Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer” and said, “What he's good at is destroying things … He's the undisputed world champion of that” when an unknown person Carlson was texting with brought up the ex-president’s failed business ventures in January 2021.
“I hate him passionately,” Carlson said about Trump, adding in a January 2021 text message, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights … I truly can’t wait.”
Host Sean Hannity testified he “did not believe … for one second” that Powell’s voter fraud claims were true and it was “obvious” Powell’s allegations were false when she appeared on his program, also saying far-right attorney Rudy Giuliani was “acting like an insane person” and calling the lawyers “f’ing lunatics.”
Anchor Laura Ingraham called Powell a “complete nut” and “ditto” with Giuliani, while Fox Corporation executive Raj Shah said the voter fraud claims were “mind blowingly nuts” and host Dana Perino said they were “total bs,” “insane” and “nonsense.”
Murdoch described the January 6 riot in an email as a “wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers,” and said the network was “very busy pivoting” after January 6 and “want[s] to make Trump a non person.”