California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued Fox News on Friday, accusing the media company of defaming him by misrepresenting his interactions with President Donald Trump.
The figure Newsom demanded in damages might sound familiar: $787 million.
That’s nearly identical to the $787.5 million that Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems in 2023 after the media company promoted falsehoods that the election technology company rigged the 2020 presidential election.
Dominion’s lawsuit was filed in Delaware Superior Court, the same venue where Newsom filed his lawsuit on Friday.
Newsom’s private lawyers, Michael Teter and Mark Bankston, worked with the same Wilmington-based law firm that Dominion used, Farnan LLP, to file their suit in the Delaware court.
Newsom alleges Fox News defamed him by calling him a liar when he denied speaking with President Donald Trump on June 9.
Around that time, Trump had sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles over Newsom’s objections. Demonstrators had held protests around the city in opposition to the president’s immigration policies.
At a press conference on June 10, Trump said he spoke to Newsom “a day ago.”
In fact, Newsom says, they spoke for 16 minutes around midnight on June 7 Eastern time (or June 6 Pacific time), the day Trump first sent the troops.
Newsom posted phone records on social media showing the timing of their call. But his lawsuit says Fox News host John Roberts misled readers about the timing in his own social media posts, anyway. The lawsuit also says Jesse Watters, a Fox opinion host, falsely called him a liar.
“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” Watters said, according to the suit.
The chyron on the screen at the time read “Gavin lied about Trump’s call,” the lawsuit says.
Newsom’s lawsuit says Fox News hasn’t learned the lessons of the Dominion lawsuit, and that it misled its viewers for political reasons.
“Unfortunately, the past two years have shown that the Dominion settlement did not serve as the deterrent many had predicted, as Fox has continued to launder the stream of false information flowing out of the White House,” the lawsuit says.
“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him,” Fox News said in a statement. “We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed.”
Dominion’s lawsuit proved embarrassing for Fox News. Depositions and emails obtained by the election technology company during the litigation process showed that then-host Tucker Carlson said he “passionately” hated Trump and that Rupert Murdoch wanted to make the now-president a “non-person” after the 2020 election.
The company is also defending a separate pending lawsuit from Smartmatic, another election technology company that says it was defamed, in a New York court. Fox News has denied the allegations in Smartmatic’s case, which remains ongoing.
Defamation cases against public figures aren’t an easy win
The First Amendment makes it difficult for public figures, like Newsom, to succeed in defamation lawsuits. They must prove in court that the defendant acted with “actual malice,” meaning the company or person knew they were lying or recklessly disregarded the truth.
In a demand letter to Fox News, Newsom’s lawyers said he would voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit if the outlet “retracts the claim that
he lied when speaking about President Trump not calling him on June 9,” and Watters issues an on-air apology.
“If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences — just like it did in the Dominion case,” Newsom said in a statement. “I believe the American people should be able to trust the information they receive from a major news outlet. Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”
Trump himself has sued numerous media outlets, many having been dismissed. Disney settled a lawsuit with him earlier this year, and he is in ongoing settlement discussions with Paramount over a “60 Minutes” episode on CBS News that he says misleadingly edited an interview with Kamala Harris.
Trump sued CBS in Texas, alleging it violated the state’s consumer protection laws by editing an interview with Kamala Harris in a way he says is misleading.
Newsom sued Fox on Friday under a similar California law. He said Fox “intentionally misled the public by purposefully broadcasting a deceptively edited video.”
“As President Trump has stated in his own complaint, ‘News organizations…are responsible for accurately reporting the truth of events, not distorting an interview to try and falsely make their preferred candidate appear coherent and decisive,'” Newsom’s lawsuit says, quoting from Trump’s.
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