According to NPR, Fox News pundit and MAGA/right wing extremist Jeanine Pirro has emerged as a key figure in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the conservative cable network over their baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Lawyers for Dominion are arguing that by questioning Pirro, it could reach the legal requirement in proving that the network showed “actual malice” in broadcasting and amplifying Donald Trump’s “big lie” of election fraud, part of which were implications that they believed Dominion helped intentionally throw the election in favor of Joe Biden.
Documents filed last week read:
“Discovery has revealed that…Fox News host Jeanine Pirro help[ed] spread the verifiably false yet devastating lies against Dominion.”
Pirro has not yet been named a defendant in the case, however.
The New York Times reported at the end of August that Pirro, along with fellow Fox personalities Steve Doocy, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, and several producers have already given testimony in the case.
Dominion Voting Systems filed the suit against Fox News in March, alleging that Fox made the bogus claims to capture viewers away from other, even further right-wing news outlets.
Dominion’s attorneys noted in their filings that “The truth matters. Lies have consequences.”
Fox producers had sent emails expressing concerns about putting Pirro on the air after the November 2020 election, because she was seemingly pulling conspiracy theories from extremist websites in order to justify the claims that Trump was saying at the time about the election being stolen from him.
Pirro also interviewed Trump campaign attorney and noted conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell about a week after the election, in which Powell made several bogus claims about the election and voting machines. Dominion’s attorneys noted that “She not only allowed Ms. Powell to air such nonsense, not only amplified it on her ‘Justice With Judge Jeanine’ program, [but] Ms. Pirro’s conduct and role in the spread of this disinformation lies at the heart of Dominion’s claims.’
