Lachlan Murdoch to testify in $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News

Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corp, is scheduled to give testimony on Monday in a $1.6 billion lawsuit that alleges the Murdochs and their media company allowed Fox News to amplify false claims that a voting machine company rigged the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

CNBC reported that Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, will appear for a deposition in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News, owned by Fox Corp.

In the $1.6 billion lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox Corp and the Murdochs of allowing Fox News to amplify false accusations that the voting company had rigged the election for Joe Biden.

Dominion originally filed a lawsuit against Fox News in June 2021. The suit argues that Fox News sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process. The suit was originally brought against Fox News, but a judge ruled in June that Fox Corp can be included in the suit.

The suit was dismissed by Fox Corp, but a Delaware judge said Dominion, which provided voting machines to 28 states, had shown enough evidence to allow the suit to proceed. Dominion was already suing OAN and Newsmax.

The allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch did not know that Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to spread its claims about Dominion, Judge Eric Davis said.

Some of Fox News' biggest on-air hosts, including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, were deposed earlier this year.

In August, the Washington Post reported that Dominion's lawyers had obtained emails and text messages from Fox employees, some of which it claimed in one filing provided evidence that Fox knew the lies it was broadcasting about Dominion were false.