Fox’s Mark Levin denies his past promotion of Sidney Powell’s Dominion conspiracy theories
Days after the 2020 election, Levin hosted Powell for a radio interview focused on attacking Dominion
Written by Brendan Karet
Published
On the February 28 edition of his Westwood One radio show, Fox host Mark Levin took issue with a Washington Post article about Dominion Voting Systems’ ongoing lawsuit against Fox News and repeatedly downplayed and dismissed his own role in promoting Sidney Powell’s outlandish conspiracy theories regarding Dominion Voting Systems.
The Post’s article, titled “Rupert Murdoch’s big admission about Fox News,” detailed new revelations from Dominion’s recently publicized court filings against the network for spreading “claims that Dominion, specifically, took part in stealing the election” in 2020. The piece noted that Powell “spouted the claim repeatedly — on Bartiromo’s, Dobbs’s, Pirro’s and Mark Levin’s shows.” (The article was later updated to clarify that Powell’s claims came on Levin’s radio show, not his Fox program.)
Levin asked “what claim” he had allowed Powell to promote on his radio show, specifically regarding “the credibility of the [Dominion] voting machines,” and declared “Sidney Powell promoted whatever she promoted, and the fact is when she took a left turn on this stuff, I cut her off.” Levin additionally defended his attacks on the 2020 presidential election, arguing, “My focus throughout was the Constitution. My focus throughout was what was going on in Pennsylvania. Wasn't about ballots, wasn't about machines, wasn't about any of that stuff. And it remains that.”
A review of Levin’s November 16, 2020, radio broadcast contradicts this version of events. In segments prior to his interview with Powell, Levin repeatedly attacked Dominion as well as critics of the conspiracy theories surrounding them.
In his interview with Powell, Levin specifically directed her to “focus … on the Dominion voting machines,” asked “why are the media ignoring the Dominion voting machines,” and allowed Powell to claim Dominion will “blow up the whole election.” Levin subsequently attacked people who claimed they are “nuts” with “conspiracy theories,” and argued that their critics “don't study this stuff. They haven't looked into this stuff. It's not their name under penalty of perjury.”
Levin’s claim that he cut Powell off when “she took a left turn on this stuff” does not accurately characterize their conversation. After allowing Powell to relentlessly attack the credibility of Dominion Voting Systems for over 12 minutes, Levin confronted Powell only when she claimed “there were essentially Biden-type payoffs to family members of the secretary of state and the governor” in Georgia, and cautioned his listeners that “you're making allegations — to protect the company here, I can't prove or disprove what you're saying. You're saying that.” Levin concluded the interview by congratulating Powell and thanking her “very, very much” for her “heavy lifting” on voter fraud claims.
Additionally, Levin’s 2023 claims that he does not “speak for any of the companies I work for or with ever, actually. Nobody contacts me and tells me what to say or what not to say,” runs against his advice in a segment following his interview with Powell in 2020, where Levin declared that “not a single one of these commentators on any of the cable shows, even my colleagues on my favorite cable channel should be free to comment on fraud and what's taking place in these states and cities if they haven't even looked into it.”
Levin has a long track record of casting doubt on the 2020 election result — he recently claimed, “When I hear that you don't have any evidence of fraud, I say to myself, that's the evidence of fraud.”