Legal expert: Fox facing "uphill" climb at trial after judge hands Dominion big early victory

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman predicted a difficult road for Fox News' attorneys at their defamation trial after the judge overseeing the case ruled that the statements at the heart of the lawsuit were false.

The trial in Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network kicked off on Tuesday. Jurors will only have to decide whether the network acted with "actual malice" after Judge Eric Davis ruled that the statements the voting machine company cited in its lawsuit were false.

"They're going to be instructed all these claims were false, 20 really vivid claims tracking the 'big lie,' and they're going to be instructed these are false," Litman said during an appearance on MSNBC on Tuesday. "That already makes it seem very plausible that they knew it, but the email traffic that we have already learned about really exposed Fox as having known about it. I think the odds here, you know, it is really a downhill path for Dominion and uphill one for Fox."

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The trial was delayed on Monday amid reports that the judge asked both sides to attempt to settle the case before the trial begins.

"I think once this last-minute momentum for settlement builds, and it did, because they went to the judge and said, 'Give us another day,' they must have said, 'We're getting there,' but then they likely returned yesterday, said they're not there yet, and the judge said, 'I'm not going to hold — we chose 12 jurors, we have to keep going,'" Litman explained. "'You have to go on two tracks to try the case in the day and continuing settlement negotiations at night.' I don't think settlement, by any means, is off the table."