ABC, CNN anchors press Dominion over Fox News settlement: ‘What you didn’t get was an apology’

Anchors from ABC News and CNN questioned representatives of Dominion Voting Systems in the wake of their massive $787 million settlement with Fox News on Tuesday over the network’s lack of a public apology in the last-minute agreement. 

Dominion and Fox News reached a settlement just hours before opening arguments were set to get underway in the defamation trial over the network’s coverage of former President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

ABC News host George Stephanopoulos pressed Dominion CEO John Poulos on the lack of a public apology on Wednesday, noting that the agreement was “one of the biggest defamation settlements ever, but what you didn’t get was an apology.”

Poulos pointed to Fox News’s acknowledgement in its statement following the settlement. The network said it acknowledges “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems,” Fox News also said in its statement, adding, “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

“At the end of the day, the court system really is about accountability,” Poulos added. “We feel we got it.”

However, Stephanopoulous reiterated that Fox News only acknowledged that the judge said the claims about voter fraud were falsehoods, adding that the network “didn’t admit to falsehoods or apologize for them.”

“Is that enough?” the news anchor asked.

“Well, if you look at the documents, I think they speak for themselves,” Poulos said.

Dominion’s lead counsel Justin Nelson similarly told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Tuesday that the company felt it had held Fox News accountable with the settlement. 

“I think, for us, really, it wasn’t so much about a settlement as a settlement,” Nelson said. “It was always about accountability. And today, what we think we achieved was accountability and vindication.”

“For us, not only of course was there over a three-quarters of a billion-dollar damages award, but as you mentioned in your opening, there was an admission, an acknowledgement, of the court’s summary judgement order that found these lies about Dominion to be false,” he continued.

However, Brown pushed back on the accountability issue, noting that Fox News’s acknowledgement was “not necessarily a full-throated admission.”

“The reality is millions of people in the United States won’t necessarily know about this,” Brown said. “I mean, do the viewers of Fox, are they owed an apology or retraction here? I mean, if they don’t know about this, where is the accountability that you speak of?”

Nelson responded that Dominion “took the civil litigation as far as we can take it.” 

“We could have gone all the way to verdict and under defamation law, you don’t get an apology. You get money,” he said, adding, “So, we see today’s settlement as complete vindication and really a message that, as your opening said, lies do have consequences.”

A Dominion spokesperson similarly told The Hill in a statement on Tuesday that “an apology is about accountability, and today Dominion held Fox accountable.” 

“Fox paid a historic settlement and issued a statement acknowledging that the statements about Dominion were false,” they said.

— Updated at 2:04 p.m.