Angelo Carusone and Sirius XM’s Dean Obeidallah discuss the Fox News defamation lawsuit: “They're in big trouble”
Carusone: “Any time you pull back the curtain at Fox, … it’s always actually led to an avalanche of more fallout”
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Angelo Carusone and Sirius XM’s Dean Obeidallah discuss the Fox News defamation lawsuit: "They're in big trouble"
Citation From the February 4, 2021, edition of Sirius XM's The Dean Obeidallah Show
DEAN OBEIDALLAH (HOST): Since you're such an expert on Fox News and on the media, I have to get your reaction. The huge lawsuit filed today, people may or may not have heard of it -- there's other lawsuits filed by Dominion Software. Well, Smartmatic, one of the voting system companies has filed a new lawsuit this afternoon: $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, plus Giuliani and Powell who are not connected, per se, to Fox News.
So, what's going on here? Because Dominion, I think, was threatening and then we heard Fox News fact check and do some things. But now Smartmatic is doing this and what do you think the real-world impact will be on Fox News from this?
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): I mean, they're in big trouble. Two ways. One, there's obviously the legal trouble here. The receipts are very extensive. These are not one-off comments. I mean, we have the documentation to show that they were making these statements very consistently, even when they knew that they were no longer accurate. And part of the reason why Giuliani is lumped in there and Sidney Powell is that they were very prolific on air during this time period. I mean, part of the reason why the guy ran off at Newsmax the other day was precisely because of a lawsuit just like this. It is simply by being there, right, you open yourself up to liabilities if you continue to let your guests engage and use that platform to libel and slander and defame, you know, in that case it's Dominion.
So, there's a real -- you know, there's a lot of evidence to back it up. I mean, very clear, concrete, demonstrable statements. So, I think they are in legal trouble, that's the first piece. To me, the real legal trouble here isn't even the money, it's actually the discovery. You know, this is clearly -- this is definitely, I have a legal background, this is clearly going to get to discovery unless the Murdochs settle which is, you know, unclear. But if it gets to discovery, think about what that's going to show. It's going to show all of the communications between these personalities, the producers and these individuals, potential administration officials. You're going to actually start to see just how much they knowingly were lying on purpose and how they were trying to craft the narrative, right? That is going to be explosive and any time you pull back the curtain at Fox, and the few times that it's happened, it's always actually led to an avalanche of more fallout.