Fox News host Sean Hannity was “privately disgusted” with former President Trump’s actions following his loss in the 2020 election, despite showing steadfast support on air, according to statements made by the network’s owner revealed in a new court filing this week.
The revelation came in the latest court filing made by Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News and billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch for defamation, seeking $1.6 billion in damages for what it calls the network’s repeated airing of false information about voter fraud.
According to the filing, former Republican Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.), who sits on the board of Fox Corp., wrote to Murdoch after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol by Trump supporters and said he believed that “some high percentage of Americans” thought the election had been rigged against Trump “because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believe were credible sources.”
“Thanks Paul,” Murdoch wrote back, according to the filing. “Wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.”
Hannity’s statements around the time of the election and Jan. 6 attack have been a focus of lawmakers and the media for months. During the hearings of the House select committee on the attack, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), read into the congressional record a series of text messages the prime-time host sent to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, showing Hannity telling Meadows “this is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
Hannity responded to the publication of his text messages on his show at the time, saying, “I said to Mark Meadows the exact same thing I was saying live on the radio at that time and on TV that night on Jan. 6 and well beyond Jan. 6.”
“I say the same thing in private that I say to all of you,” he continued. “Liz Cheney knows this. She doesn’t seem to care. She’s interested in one thing and one thing only: smearing Trump and purging him from the party.”
Fox has moved to have the case brought against it by Dominion dismissed on First Amendment grounds, arguing in a filing of its own this week it was only covering the claims being made by Trump and his associates.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims,” the network said in a statement on Monday evening. “Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear Fox for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”
Dominion’s filing also includes deposition testimony from Murdoch in which he acknowledged top hosts at the network “endorsed” Trump’s false claims “as commentators.”
The jury trial in the case is slated to begin in April.