Top Fox Corp. lawyer to exit company

A top lawyer at Fox Corp., the company that owns Fox News Media, will exit the company at the end of the year.

Viet Dinh, who has served as the media conglomerate’s lead legal counsel and reported directly to top executive Lachlan Murdoch, will step down effective December 31, 2023.

“We appreciate Viet’s many contributions and service to Fox as both a board member of 21st Century Fox and in his role over the last five years as a valued member of FOX’s leadership team,” Murdoch said in a statement on Friday. “We are grateful that he will continue to serve Fox as Special Advisor where we will benefit from his counsel.”

Dinh’s departure comes just months after Fox agreed to pay $787 million in settlement money to Dominion Voting Systems in connection with Fox News’ airing of false claims about the company’s software being promoted by former president Trump and his allies.

Fox’s legal team had mounted a First Amendment defense throughout the legal saga and argued for months the claims being made by Trump and others about the 2020 election were newsworthy.

As part of Dominion’s legal process of discovery, a trove of internal communications from within the network was unearthed, showing top executives and hosts throwing cold water on the assertions being made about voter fraud by Trump and his allies.

Fox still faces a separate defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, another voting systems company, over similar claims made on its air following the 2020 election.

“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” a spokesperson for the network said in its most recent statement about that lawsuit. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

The Wall Street Journal, which is also owned by the Murdochs, reported on Friday that Dinh was among the most influential executives at Fox Corp. and noted he had been instrumental in the company’s legal strategy in fighting back the recent defamation claims the company has faced.

In a statement, Dinh said he has “been privileged to be part of the Fox family” and he “look[s] forward to continuing with Fox as Special Advisor, and to returning to my roots of working on multiple ventures and with many clients across a variety of disciplines.”