Fox News and Dominion spar in new legal filings

CNN  — 

Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News traded barbs in new court filings Wednesday, with the election technology company accusing Fox of wanting a “license to knowingly spread lies,” and the right-wing channel claiming the lawsuit is an “unprecedented assault on the First Amendment.”

The filings tee up a high-stakes hearing in two weeks, where a Delaware state judge will hear arguments on “summary judgment” — or whether he should decide the case before it goes to trial. Most legal experts expect that the case will ultimately proceed to trial before a jury in mid-April.

Dominion asked the judge to decide the case in their favor because, in their view, Fox has already conceded that its on-air statements about Dominion rigging the 2020 election were false.

“Fox has produced no evidence — none, zero — supporting those lies,” Dominion said. “This concession should come as no surprise. Discovery into Fox has proven that from the top of the organization to the bottom, Fox always knew the absurdity of the Dominion ‘stolen election’ story.”

“Fox seeks a First Amendment license to knowingly spread lies,” Dominion added, rejecting Fox’s argument that the election-rigging allegations were “newsworthy” and thus protected under the First Amendment.

The company continued, “if Fox cared about the truth that it now acknowledges, Fox would have its top personalities reporting that truth to its audience. Today. If not for Dominion’s sake, then for the sake of the significant percentage of Americans who still wrongly believe the 2020 election was stolen — including so many of Fox’s own loyal viewers, who heard it over and over again on Fox’s airwaves.”

In response, Fox News described Dominion’s lawsuit as an “unprecedented effort to punish the press for covering and commenting on the most newsworthy story of the day.” Lawyers for the right-wing network said Dominion’s defamation allegations have “no basis in law or fact.”

“This effort to publicly smear a media organization just for having the temerity to cover and comment on allegations being pressed by the sitting President of the United States should be now recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” Fox News said.