Sean Hannity deposed in lawsuit alleging Fox News pushed election conspiracy theories

The billion-dollar lawsuit against Fox was filed by Dominion Voting Systems last March

By Kelly McClure

Nights & Weekends Editor

Published August 31, 2022 5:56PM (EDT)

Sean Hannity appears on FOX News Channel's "Hannity" at FOX Studios on May 11, 2015 in New York City. (Rob Kim/Getty Images)
Sean Hannity appears on FOX News Channel's "Hannity" at FOX Studios on May 11, 2015 in New York City. (Rob Kim/Getty Images)

Fox News host Sean Hannity is scheduled to be deposed on Wednesday in a billion-dollar election conspiracy lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. In the lawsuit, which was filed by Dominion last March, they allege that Fox News had a hand in pushing an agenda pertaining to Trump's claim that the 2020 election was unfairly won by President Biden. Fellow Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Jeannine Pirro and former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs are also named in association to the lawsuit, according to ABC News.

"Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process," a representative for Dominion stated in their initial complaint against the network. "Fox recklessly disregarded the truth . . . Indeed, Fox knew these statements about Dominion were lies."

"The critical issue here is the state of mind of Fox and those individual people," Floyd Abrams, one of the country's leading experts on First Amendment law, said in a quote to ABC News. "What did they say about Dominion, and did they believe it? "In order for Dominion to win, it has to show that what was said was not just false, but that it was known or suspected to be false." 

In a statement issued by a spokesperson for Fox in regards to the lawsuit they maintain that no wrong-doing was done on their part saying  "We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported, and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs."


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"Fox took a small flame" of disinformation and "turned it into a forest fire," Dominion said in its lawsuit per coverage by CNN. "The truth matters. Lies have consequences."  


By Kelly McClure

Kelly McClure is Salon's Nights and Weekends Editor covering daily news, politics and culture. Her work has been featured in Vulture, The A.V. Club, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Vice, and elsewhere. She is the author of Something is Always Happening Somewhere.

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Aggregate Conspiracy Donald Trump Fox News Sean Hannity