In Deposition, Rupert Murdoch Says Fox News Hosts Endorsed False 2020 Election Claims

Mr. Murdoch, the chair of Fox News parent Fox Corp., said Fox News and Fox Business commentators including on-air hosts Jeanine Pirro,

Maria Bartiromo,

Lou Dobbs and

Sean Hannity,

endorsed the idea of a stolen election to varying degrees, according to a deposition cited in Dominion’s brief, which was unsealed Monday. 

The media baron said Fox News itself didn’t endorse that narrative. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” Mr. Murdoch said, according to the filing. Asked if he could have stopped the hosts from highlighting allegations on air, Mr. Murdoch responded, “I could have. But I didn’t.”

Mr. Murdoch is also executive chairman of

News Corp,

NWSA -0.97%

parent of The Wall Street Journal. He and his family are large shareholders in Fox Corp. and News Corp. 

Dominion is suing for what it alleges were defamatory on-air comments about its products after former President

Donald Trump

lost the election to President Biden. The voting-machine company is seeking $1.6 billion in damages.

Fox News Media has said that it simply reported newsworthy allegations, and the lawsuit would be an attack on press freedom under the First Amendment. Fox has also argued the damages claim from Dominion vastly overstates the value of the company, and that the voting company can’t tie any losses directly to the network’s coverage.

Fox News Media said in a statement Monday that Dominion’s lawsuit “has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny.”

The bar is high to prove a defamation claim. Dominion will need to show that the network knowingly aired false claims or proceeded with a reckless disregard for the truth. Dominion has argued that Fox News went further than simply repeating allegations of Trump allies, but endorsed the false claims, even as many hosts and top executives expressed doubt about the allegations.

Fox says Dominion has taken comments from its hosts out of context and accused the voting company of having an extreme view of defamation law that, if upheld, would have negative implications for the broader news media.

Fox News Media canceled Mr. Dobbs’ show in February 2021. A representative for Mr. Dobbs couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

A trial is slated to begin April 17 in Delaware state court.

Dominion’s filing paints a portrait of Mr. Murdoch and his son Lachlan being heavily involved in shaping Fox News’s coverage of the election and its aftermath. The network dealt with the loss of viewers who were angry about its call that Mr. Biden had won Arizona, and struggled with how to deal with false claims from President Trump and his allies that the election had been stolen, according to the filing.

It also shows how various board members of Fox Corp., including

Paul Ryan,

the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, lobbied the Murdochs to, in Mr. Ryan’s words, “move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies.”

The senior Mr. Murdoch testified that he didn’t believe any claim of massive election fraud, according to the filing.

Raj Shah, a senior executive at Fox Corp., reached out to a polling company in the days after the election about polling Fox News viewers, according to the filing, saying, “our brand is under heavy fire from our customer base.” Rival but smaller networks, Newsmax and One America News Network, were devoting considerable airtime to false claims about the 2020 election.

Lachlan Murdoch

testified that the drop in Fox News’s ratings would “keep me awake” at night, according to the filing.

Fox Business Network President

Lauren Petterson

wrote to a colleague that “we are going to look back and know that this was when we lost a significant part of our audience who won’t come back,” according to the filing.

The next morning, Nov. 8, Fox Business host Ms. Bartiromo’s show aired an interview with

Sidney Powell,

a pro-Trump lawyer who made claims that Dominion’s voting machines rigged the election for Mr. Biden.

Later that month, Mr. Murdoch responded to a former Fox executive who sent him an article about Fox’s difficult position in having to navigate between endorsing President Trump’s conspiracy theories and losing its audience. Mr. Murdoch said the article had “[s]ome truth,” but that “Fox News is navigating it pretty well.” He added that prime-time host

Tucker Carlson

had called out “that crazy would be lawyer,” in what Dominion’s lawyers said was a reference to Ms. Powell.

On Jan. 5, 2021, Mr. Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott discussed whether their prime-time hosts should say that the election was over and Mr. Biden won. Mr. Murdoch said such a statement “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen,” according to internal communications quoted in Dominion’s filing. Ms. Scott told Mr. Murdoch that “privately they are all there” but “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers,” according to internal communications in the filing. According to Dominion, no statement was made.

After the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Murdoch told a former colleague “Fox News very busy pivoting…We want to make Trump a non person,” according to communications quoted in Dominion’s filing. In response to an email from Mr. Ryan, who testified that he believed “some high percentage of Americans” thought the election was stolen “because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believe were credible sources,” Mr. Murdoch wrote: “Wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.”

Even after Jan. 6, Fox continued to host guests who claimed the election was stolen. On Jan. 26, 2021, Mr. Carlson had Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow Inc. and a major Fox advertiser, on the air claiming Dominion was involved in election fraud, according to the filing.

In the segment, Mr. Lindell said his Twitter account was suspended for retweeting information about “new machine election fraud” and he dared Dominion to sue him for his election claims. In a text message late Monday, Mr. Carlson said, “Despite lies to the contrary, the segment I did with Mike Lindell had nothing to do with the 2020 election.”

Mr. Murdoch testified, regarding Mr. Lindell, “the man is on every night. Pays us a lot of money,” according to the Dominion filing. When Dominion’s lawyers asked him why Fox continued to give Mr. Lindell a platform, Mr. Murdoch testified, “It is not red or blue, it is green.”

Write to Erin Mulvaney at [email protected] and Keach Hagey at [email protected]