Major news network Fox News is aiming to settle the long-awaited defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems as soon as possible, according to sources close to the Wall Street Journal and Reuters.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis, who is presiding over the lawsuit decided to push the commencement of the trial to Tuesday, on Sunday night. His motives as to why he decided to move it a day later are unknown.
Davis apparently held a brief sidebar conference with attorneys representing both Fox and Dominion, playing white noise in the background so their conversations would not be heard by the public.
Dominion first filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit in March 2021, claiming that Fox News and Fox Corporation allegedly defamed the election technology company when it hosted lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who questioned the company’s systems accuracy in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
The lawyers pushed attention toward Dominion voting machines, stating potential ties to secretly flipped votes from former President Trump to now-President Joe Biden. Dominion alleges that Fox hosts Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs either endorsed those claims or didn’t sufficiently push back against them when they hosted Giuliani and Powell on their shows.
Because of the United States’ strong free speech protections, defamation lawsuits are difficult to win. The election technology company would have to prove Fox News acted with “actual malice” — a legal standard meaning that the media outlet would actively know to be false or negating from the truth.
Both parties can settle any time before or after the trial.
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