Lawyers representing Dominion Voting Systems are now asking producers for Tucker Carlson to sit for depositions in their sprawling $1.6 billion election defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
According to a series of filings this week, Dominion has asked Justin Wells, Eldad Yaron, Alex Pfieffer, producers for Tucker Carlson, and John Fawcett, a former associate producer for former Fox host Lou Dobbs to sit for depositions by the end of September.
On March 26, 2021, Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News seeking $1.6 billion in damages, claiming that the network gave prominence to the election-fraud claims as a tactic to revive viewership as ratings dropped after President Donald Trump’s loss.
Dominion manufactures and sells electronic voting hardware, software, and voting machines and was repeatedly targeted with conspiracies in the wake of the 2020 election.
And in the company’s lawsuit, Dominion claimed that Fox News “sold a false story of election fraud to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process.”
Two months later, Fox News filed to dismiss the motion, and by December 2021, a judge had rejected Fox’s motion.
“We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported, and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs,” a spokesperson for Fox News told Insider in a statement.
The case is set to go to trial in April 2023, and the voting company will aim to use key testimonies from the producers to build its case.
In June, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis ruled that Dominion’s lawsuit could move forward, including claims against Fox Corporation, Fox News’s parent company run by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch.
Davis argued that Fox News’s parent company Fox Corporation could also be found to be liable for pushing and directing the campaign of election lies, particularly after Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden and as the network sought to regain lost viewers from right-wing channels like Newsmax and One America News Network.
In February 2021, another voting systems company, Smartmatic, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and current and former hosts moving forward in New York.
