Fox News Media filed to dismiss a defamation lawsuit of $1.6 billion brought by Dominion Voting Systems Tuesday.
Dominion originally filed the defamation lawsuit against Fox News in March, accusing the company of advancing false claims of Dominion rigging its voting machines in the 2020 election. The claim said they specifically did so to flip votes to now-President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump, according to Insider.
In the suit, Dominion claimed that Fox News “sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes” through the guests they hosted, including Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal lawyer. (RELATED: Dominion Lawyer Says Company Still Considering Suing Trump, Other Media Outlets Over Election Fraud Claims)
Fox News’s request for dismissal said “the American people deserved to know why President Trump refused to concede despite his apparent loss,” and that the lawsuit threatened the freedom of press under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Fox News went on to say that “a free press must be able to report both sides of a story involving claims striking at the core of our democracy … Especially when those claims prompt numerous lawsuits, government investigations and election recounts.”
Dominion’s lawyers have stated that the company will lose approximately $600 million over the next several years as a result of the “disinformation” spread by Fox News about its voting equipment, according to Insider.