Hogan: Conservative leaders would privately agree election wasn’t stolen, but ‘go out and say complete opposite’

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Sunday said he knew conservative leaders who would privately agree the 2020 election wasn’t stolen but publicly say otherwise.

Hogan made the comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” responding to a question about a new court filing in Dominion Voting Systems’s lawsuit against Fox News that says the new outlet’s hosts didn’t agree with the allegations of 2020 election fraud but still gave airtime to the theories.

“[Fox News] is the town square for conservatives. Are you concerned that we now have evidence that essentially the moderators of this town square refused to tell the truth to their viewers because they were afraid of offending them?” moderator Chuck Todd asked Hogan.

“I am concerned about it,” Hogan said. “And I don’t know all the details of it. We’re just seeing some of these facts come forward with this Dominion case. But I think I’ve been concerned for a long time as I talked to conservative leaders who agreed with what I was saying — you know, I was pretty out there, you know, pretty direct, answering some of these questions about Jan. 6, about the election wasn’t stolen.”

“And many of them would say it privately, but then they would go out and say something almost the complete opposite and it sounds like that’s what some of the hosts on Fox News did. And now more people are starting to say exactly what they believe,” the former governor added.

The filing last week revealed internal communications suggesting top Fox News executives and hosts had doubts about former President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential win was stolen from him, though the outlet regularly presented those claims to its viewers.

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Tucker Carlson wrote to fellow prime-time host Laura Ingraham on Nov. 18, according to the filing.

“Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” Ingraham purportedly responded, apparently referring to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Both Powell and Giuliani publicly promoted unfounded claims that Dominion shifted vote counts to steal the election from Trump.

Dominion Voting Systems is suing for defamation, seeking $1.6 billion in damages and alleging the network knowingly aired false information about the voting machines software during the election. Fox has contended that it was covering the allegations as any news outlet would.

In a statement earlier this week, the outlet said “the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”