Sean Hannity told lawyers during a deposition as part of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News that he never believed former President Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 President Election being stolen. That revelation came months before it was uncovered that several other prominent Fox News hosts and executives echoed those claims.
However, the network is now undergoing a credibility crisis, and a caller on Hannity’s nationally syndicated radio show accused Hannity of knowingly lying about the situation, which he pushed back on.
“You knew the election wasn’t stolen from Trump, and you guys lied about it anyway because you felt you had a good reason,” the caller said, as transcribed by Media Matters.
“No. If you listen to what I said on the air every day, what did I talk about? Let me remind you. I talked about laws being violated,” Hannity responded. “Partisan observers, for example, most states have laws that partisan observers get to watch the vote count from start to finish. In 2020, they were a hundred feet back. They were a thousand feet back. There was no accommodation to uphold the law that allows partisan observers to observe.
“I made the case about Pennsylvania’s constitution being violated because the constitution in Pennsylvania, it specifies in great detail, the only people that can vote by mail. Now instead of going through the arduous process of getting a constitutional amendment. State legislators decided they just would pass a law. Well, that’s not how you amend a constitution by passing a law. So they went the unconstitutional route. Now, you know, a lot of courts didn’t want to take up these cases, but I’m just telling you the truth.”
Hannity often gave time to Trump allies after the 2020 Election, including Sidney Powell, who claimed “the dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, liberal philanthropist George Soros, communist Chinese money, and the CIA,” had all conspired against Trump in the election.
Powell also told Hannity in an additional interview that Dominion voting machines were implanted with software that would change votes from Trump to Biden.
A message from Fox News Chairman Rupert Murdoch to Fox Corp. board member and former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan claimed Hannity had been “privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers” after the January 6th Insurrection.
