When a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News goes to trial in Delaware this week, it will likely include evidence about election tampering and false claims of voter fraud in Georgia.
Sworn testimony could be relevant to Fulton County prosecutors as they’re considering charges related to allegations that former President Donald Trump and his allies criminally interfered with the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The suit by Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, which manufactured Georgia’s election equipment, alleges that Fox’s on-air hosts and network executives allowed Trump’s supporters to lie about his loss, resulting in severe financial harm to the company.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Thursday, and then the trial would start Monday.
What does the defamation case have to do with the Fulton County investigation into election interference?
Both probes involve Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, two of the attorneys who aided the Trump campaign’s efforts to reverse the results of the presidential election in Georgia, where Trump lost by less than 12,000 votes to Democrat Joe Biden.
Powell coordinated a team of computer experts to copy election software in January 2021 in Coffee County, located in South Georgia. A special grand jury in Fulton subpoenaed documents last fall from Powell and the tech company she hired, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, as part of its inquiry.
The special grand jury also requested that Powell testify, though a ruling from a court in Texas, where Powell lives, effectively made it optional for witnesses from the state to travel to Atlanta and appear. Powell didn’t testify before the panel, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the probe.
Testifying before a state Senate subcommittee in December 2020, Giuliani promoted allegations about election fraud that were later debunked. Giuliani and other witnesses told Georgia senators that tens of thousands of people had voted illegally in Georgia and that voting machines may have been manipulated. Giuliani was informed he was a target of the Fulton investigation and testified before the special grand jury in August.
Several grand jurors interviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said they heard testimony from Eric Coomer, a onetime executive for Dominion who left his job after receiving a litany of online threats. Early in its tenure, the grand jury also subpoenaed the Georgia secretary of state’s office for a copy of an audit of Georgia’s voting equipment.
A heavily redacted version of the grand jury’s final report recommended that prosecutors should pursue perjury charges against at least one unnamed witness, but it didn’t provide details.
Did Fox News promote falsehoods about Dominion?
A Delaware judge overseeing the lawsuit wrote that it is “CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” according his March 31 ruling that allowed the case to proceed to trial.
Fox provided a platform for statements that network executives and hosts knew were false, according to documents disclosed as part of the Dominion lawsuit.
Powell claimed on Fox that Dominion voting machines were rigged, spreading a theory that the elections company used software created in Venezuela to help former President Hugo Chavez. Giuliani also repeatedly appeared on Fox to assert that Dominion changed votes in its machines, according to Dominion’s lawsuit.
Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch wrote in a January 2021 email that the network’s on-air hosts, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, maybe “went too far,” and he later said in a deposition that “the election was not stolen.”
Fox has denied the allegations, accusing Dominion of inventing claims of lost business and misrepresenting remarks by the network’s hosts.
What’s next in the Georgia investigation of election interference?
Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis could seek charges as a result of her criminal investigation, which centered on Trump’s recorded phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the president pressured the state’s top election official to “find” enough votes to reverse the election results.
The Fulton inquiry expanded to include the appointment of a slate of “alternate” electors, Giuliani’s false claims to the state Senate, attempts to intimidate a Fulton poll worker and the copying of confidential election data in Coffee County.
The special grand jury recommended that more than a dozen people be charged with crimes, according to jury forewoman Emily Kohrs. The redacted grand jury report sealed the names of those who could be charged.
Have there been problems with Georgia’s Dominion voting machines?
Georgia purchased a new statewide voting system from Dominion in 2019 for $107 million, replacing all-electronic voting machines with touchscreens that print out ballots.
During the first major test of the voting system in the 2020 primary election, poll workers in some precincts couldn’t get voting machines to work, often because they were unfamiliar with how to operate the new equipment.
Since then, there haven’t been many problems with voting touchscreens or ballot scanners.
A federal cybersecurity agency reported last year that the touchscreens used in Georgia have security vulnerabilities, but there’s no evidence those weaknesses have been ever been exploited. Election officials say audits and physical security protect the voting system from potential tampering.
— The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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