Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr was subpoenaed in a $1.6 billion defamation suit brought against Fox News by the voting machine company falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election.
Dominion Voting Systems Inc. is seeking sworn testimony from Barr, who served as former President Donald Trump’s attorney general, court filings show. One of several former administration officials who refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, Barr said he told the president that some of his allegations were “complete nonsense,” according to a video recording of his deposition before the House Jan. 6 committee. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson later testified that Trump threw his lunch against a wall after reading an interview in which Barr rejected claims of election fraud.
Barr’s lawyer, Noel Francisco, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Dominion is gathering testimony from bipartisan officials who warned Trump that his conspiracy was baseless, to demonstrate that Fox News was on notice that the claims were false and yet reported them anyway for weeks. Fox News has argued that its broadcasts on allegations of voter fraud were journalism protected by the First Amendment.
Last week Dominion subpoenaed Christopher Krebs, a former top cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security whom Trump fired for refusing to question the integrity of the election. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was pressured by Trump to flip the state’s election results after Joe Biden was declared the winner, was also subpoenaed.
According to Dominion’s suit in Delaware state court, Fox News knowingly broadcast false claims that voting machines were rigged in order to win back viewers upset that the conservative network had called the election for Biden.
A judge in December ruled Dominion’s suit against Fox News could go forward because the network probably had enough information after the election to know the conspiracy theory was false. The judge last month also allowed Dominion’s claim against Fox’s parent company Fox Corp. to move forward, because Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch may have acted with “actual malice” in directing the network to broadcast the conspiracy.
Story by Erik Larson.
