Jury selection in the Fox News defamation trial with Dominion Voting Systems begins tomorrow, as more and more media attention begins to focus on the upcoming court proceedings.
On Tuesday, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said if he were one of the lawyers representing Fox News, he would “feel queasy” about the situation.
“I would not want to be in the position of defending Fox here,” Honig told Jake Tapper during CNN’s The Lead. “I think they’re headed for a full-blown journalistic and legal disaster. It is very difficult to successfully sue a media outlet for defamation in this country. What you have to prove is what we call ‘actual malice’, meaning the statements were false and the defendant made those statements knowingly or with reckless disregard of the truth.”
Honig noted that proving the case is more difficult than the average person may understand, but believed there is substantial evidence to support Dominion’s claims.
“That’s a very high bar, but here we have Fox’s own texts in black and white, where they call the election fraud claims, and I quote, ‘nuts’, ‘insane’, and ‘b.s.’,” noted Honig, alluding to private messages from hosts like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson that showed the behind-the-scenes feelings of those at Fox News.
Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News after the network’s hosts and interview subjects claimed the company was complicit in a plot to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The election machine company is seeking $1.6 billion in damages.
Fox News has continually denied any wrongdoing and has pointed to protections in the First Amendment as its defense.
The trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, April 17th.
