Judge: Request for Tucker Carlson personnel files is ‘intrusive’

A judge in Delaware swatted away a request from Dominion Voting Systems that the personnel file of Fox News host Tucker Carlson be turned over to the company as part of a lawsuit it has filed against the cable news outlet. 

Judge Eric Davis said in Delaware state court during a discovery hearing that a company’s reviews of employees are “about as personal as it gets,” and Dominion’s requests to see Carlson’s were “too intrusive,” Bloomberg reported. 

In March, Dominion filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News over claims made about the company during its coverage of the 2020 presidential election, alleging the top-rated cable news outlet peddled “baseless conspiracy theories” about it. 

Fox News moved to dismiss the lawsuit in May, arguing the network did not invent the claims Dominion faced over alleged issues with its machines and was merely reporting on remarks made by other people. 

Dominion argued during Tuesday’s discovery hearing the reviews of Carlson and other top hosts at the company like Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro would prove that the network booked Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and others who pushed baseless conspiracy theories about Dominion with malicious intent. 

Davis criticized Fox during Tuesday’s hearing, Bloomberg reported, over the company’s effort to assert attorney-client privilege to prevent the disclosure of other information Dominion is seeking as part of its lawsuit. These include what Dominion alleges to be a joint-defense agreement between the network and Giuliani, Powell and Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow, whom the company has also sued over his statements about the 2020 election. 

“The existence of a joint defense agreement is not privileged,” Davis said during the hearing. “We all know that’s not true.”

Dominion Voting Systems did not immediately respond to a request for comment.