Fox News host Steve Doocy reminded House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY) that while he made headlines with his press conference on Wednesday, he failed to provide any facts that President Joe Biden or members of his family had been engaged in a influence peddling scheme.
Doocy began by telling Comer, “I know the Republicans said that the smoking gun were these financial records that you were able to subpoena and got your hands on. And your party, the Republican investigators, say that that’s proof of influence peddling by Hunter and James [Biden].”
“But that’s just your suggestion, Doocy continued. “You don’t actually have any facts to that point. You’ve got some circumstantial evidence.”
Doocy also noted, “And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is that — there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.”
Comer replied, “But make no mistake, Joe Biden was involved. All these countries that the Bidens were receiving money from were countries that Joe Biden was actively visiting in.”
If so, then where’s the evidence? It sure as hell wasn’t presented at the press conference. As usual, Republicans have lies, but they’re missing any facts.
Now that a judge has decided a jury will be empaneled to hear the case of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News, the conservative network is about to face a monumental task of defending itself from a $1.6 billion lawsuit without several crucial defense arguments.
That was the topic of discussion Sunday on MSNBC when host Katie Phang spoke with Jeremy Peters of The New York Times.
“Judge Eric Davis on Friday decimated much of Fox’s potential trial defenses, ruling that Fox cannot invoke the neutral report privilege because the evidence does not support that Fox conducted good faith reporting, Phang noted. “The judge is also blocking Fox from using the fair reporting privilege because the statements made by Fox and its guests were not related to official proceedings.”
Peters concurred with Phang, adding, “When the jury gets the case several of Fox’s key arguments will not be available for its lawyers to make.”
The Times reporter then elaborated:
“Several of these will have already been decided in Dominion’s favor because of the judge’s decision on Friday. So what this does is it significantly limits Fox’s ability to mount a defense and leaves for the jury the key question of whether or not there is enough evidence to show that Fox hosts, producers and executives knew what they were putting on the air was false or at least recklessly disregarded information showing that it was false.”
“That is how you get to potentially significant and sizeable judgment against Fox News,” Peters added. “Dominion is asking for $1.6 billion and appears that, unless this settles, which I think it’s highly unlikely at this point, and has already been highly unlikely because Fox appears to be preserving its options for appeal here, this is going to head to the jury and it will be one of the most significant and far-reaching defamation suits against a major media company that we have seen in decades.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWTdkuxP2d4
Fox is also facing a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election and software technology company.
The first line of that lawsuit lays out exactly how both Smartmatic and Dominion plan to win their cases against Fox:
“The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.”
None of those facts are up for debate. And they could wind up bankrupting Fox.
If you see the name of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) trending on social media this morning, it’s because he made a complete jackass of himself during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show Thursday evening.
Graham was discussing the indictment of disgraced ex-president Donald Trump by a Manhattan grand jury with the Fox News host when he got all weepy and started begging viewers to send cash to the failed one-term, twice-impeached former president for his legal defense.
His eyes red as if he’d been crying and at times slurring his words, Graham whined:
“They’re trying to destroy Donald Trump because they fear him at the ballot box. To the conservatives out there, make sure you vote if you got friends, make sure they vote. If you don’t have any friends, go make some friends but you need to help this man, Donald J. Trump. They’re trying to drain him dry; he’s spent more money on lawyers than most spend on campaigns. They’re trying to bleed him dry.
Donaldjtrump.com — go tonight, give the president some money to fight this bullshit. This is going to destroy America”
Graham’s plea was mocked by “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough Friday morning on MSNBC:
“I’ve got to say, that Lindsey Graham moment? He’s tearing up. Lindsey knows what a bad man Donald Trump is. Lindsey is the one who said, ‘if we make him our nominee, he’ll destroy the Republican party and we deserve it.'”
Scarborough added:
“Lindsey almost crying there — that reminded me of Oral Roberts climbing up into his tower in the ’80s, saying, ‘Give me $3 million or I’m not coming down from this tower.'”
He’s crying because he knows that his party, as he knew it, is done. And he was one of the many that let it happen. His old buddy, John McCain stood up to the bullies. Lindsey caved
Every single one of them knows that if things get messy, Trump will throw them to the wolves so fast that they’re all tripping over each other tonight. #GOPPanicModeActivatedhttps://t.co/dwwetLqhgI
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell set a reporter from Fox Business straight on the basics of the U.S. economy and inflation Wednesday during a press conference.
During the press conference, reporter Edward Lawrence suggested that government spending was partially responsible for inflation, remarking:
“Inflation has been rather sticky, so do you need help from the fiscal side to get inflation down faster?”
Powell replied:
“We don’t give advice to the fiscal authorities, and we assume that we take fiscal policy as it comes to our front door, stick it in our model along with a million other things, and we have responsibility for price stability. And we will get inflation down to 2% in time.”
Lawrence tried again to link spending to inflation:
“But the spending that’s happened is working against what you are doing, right? So it’s prolonging inflation?”
As Fox News faces daily revelations from the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, yet another defamation suit against has been given the go ahead by a court, and this one is considered to be even more dangerous than the Dominion case.
The Guardian reports on the second lawsuit, which has been filed by Smartmatic and is seeking $2.7 billion in damages.
Smartmatic claims that more than 100 false statements were broadcast by Fox News hosts and guests. Smartmatic was falsely said to have been involved in 2020 election counts in six battleground states – in fact, it was present only at the count in Los Angeles county.
Fox broadcast that Smartmatic shared its technology with Dominion, when in fact the two companies had no communication and regarded each other as rivals. Smartmatic was in cahoots with foreign governments in a conspiracy to rig the vote for Biden, Giuliani said on Bartiromo’s show – a claim that the company disputes as false and defamatory.
Fox also described Smartmatic as having been founded in Venezuela at the behest of corrupt dictators. In fact, it was founded by Antonio Mugica and Roger Piñate in 2000 in Boca Raton, Florida, in the wake of the “hanging chad” fiasco, with the aim of using technology to restore people’s faith in election results.
Fox suggested in a statement that the Smartmatic lawsuit cannot stand up to First Amendment scrutiny:
“Freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs. There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the US and his lawyers making allegations.”
But the one-two punch of Dominion and Smartmatic would seem to be Fox’s worst nightmare made reality, and the First Amendment doesn’t protect against blatant lies such as the ones Fox is accused of broadcasting.