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
amendment. the judge came out the right way that the actual malice standard is the right standard. that s what we were going to hold fox to at the trial and there s not some privilege to publish whatever you want just because it s newsworthy. that s part of what the judge did in this case and due violence to the first amet that s the first time i ve heard it put that way. say more the theories advanced in a lot of the briefings, nicolle, if you read through our briefing the theory fox was advancing would basically give a free pass to knowingly publish lies even if you know they re lies as long as you think they re newsworthy. judge davis read all the briefings and he came out the right way. he said, no, there s no free pass just because something is newsworthy if you know it s a lie, you can t publish it or you face liability. it s an extraordinary thing to sort of sit in for a minute
yeah, you know, i think we re all waiting to see how this came together and i m not sure anyone gets answers because part of the settlement could be not talking about the settlement back to the topic of accountability for a second, i mean as somebody who s reported on fox where you re always trying to trying to get behind, man, we have a lot of facts. we have thousands of pages of internal documentation about how fox worked as a business and everything you thought might be true, you know, is pretty much true. we know that words cannot be disputed we know how they operate we know how their prime time shows come together. we know they don t care that much about the facts we know they re willing to peddle lies if their audience
occur in court we actually didn t have anything close to opening statements in this case. and that is definitely something that i was taking notes on i m curious to hear whether or not there is going to be a separate written apology from fox. maybe actually one that is broadcast on the news, in the different programs we didn t hear an answer to that i know you were listening. and that was one of the questions asked for the team for dominion collectcollectively, ar was no answer. hearing that fox admitted to telling lies to dominion didn t happen outside the courthouse. we don t know where that s going to be done it did not happen in the statement where they, simply, quote, acknowledged certain claims to be false that s right i m sitting here wondering if that statement by fox coupled with the judge s ruling earlier in the case is what we re talking about is what poulos was referencing there people at the press conference dodged questions from the