today. opening statements were supposed to start at 1:30 so far though, neither side has spoken and no reason has been given for the now hour and a half delay while we are waiting, we have just learned judge davis has authorized a special master to investigate fox s handling of discovery. we re going to explain in a moment this trial, when it does eventually start again, is not being televised. and nor can it be photographed one person was already kicked out of the courtroom for a snap, which the judge has said was deleted. don t worry though, we ve got our own reporters inside the courtroom updating us with the details. how exactly is this trial going to go? well, at least there s this. the judge ruled from the start that the election was not stolen and that fox was wrong to report that it was. in fact, he said it was crystal clear his words that the statements put out by the network and its hosts were false. now it is up to dominion to prove that there was actual malice beh
stopping that interview. deadline: white house which has a lot more about this starts right now. hi there, everyone, we come on the air with a whopper of a breaking news story for you. a settlement has been reached in that massive $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by dominion voting systems against fox news it was that kind of day. everyone waiting for a vatican-like puff of smoke a lot of delays. a lot of pontificating and a lot of wondering what might be happening and now, we know nick confessori, the judge in this case, at 3:57 as we sat waiting to come on the air, quote, the parties have resolved the case do you have anything to say about that look, this is a very big deal it surprised many people, today was going to be the opening day of arguments there was a two-hour delay after lunch. no one came back with the arguments. we saw the two parties in the courtroom, waiting in the courtroom, exchanging some paper. and before air time, we get the announcement f
settlement fox said this, quote, we we acknowledge the court s rulings, filings, certain claims about dominion to be false, end quote. here s fox news media analyst howard curts right after reading that statement on the air. i do think the statement acknowledging certain claims overall, and this had to do with the idea dominion voting machines and former president trump and his allies made this case on fox and elsewhere were somehow stealing votes from donald trump and flipping them to joe biden that s obviously false those were conspiracy theories, but the case would have revolved around whether fox had done its due diligence, whether it was reckless good for howard curts, he goes further than his company does in that carefully worded statement. as we heard from dominion s lawyer, justin nelson, the stakes for dominion were high as well the truth matters lies have consequences
bucket of rulings which today included the appointment of a special master giving free rein to continue and redo it definitely was the case that fox experienced a bruising set of developments at the tail end of last week in pretrial hearings including those sanctions that you describe and now the appointment of the special master it also lost in pretrial hearings the opportunity to put forward a couple of major privileges it was hoping to be able to lean into as its defense here all of those things combined together put it into a position it may have been much more motivated to increase the numbers we talked about. even as we now see as the jury was being impanelled stay with us. we re now joined by phone by dominion lawyer stephen
point, a spokesperson said, quote, dominion s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and did damage caused by fox s disinformation campaign. sparkmatic will explosion the rest that s a statement going forward and more to unearth. that s why it s interesting to see if the special master process goes forward because that can be part of something that gets unearthed in this case because, you know, a jump dge is not bound by a settlement agreement. the judge has his own interest if he thinks he was lied to in the discovery process. so this is definitely a to-be continued both on what the judge may do and continued litigation. yeah, i mean, jeremy, how does fox deal with defamation of smartmatic when they basically have a road map proceeding in this case? reporter: i imagine this puts