While Fox has settled with Dominion Voting Systems over defamation allegations related to the network’s 2020 election lies, another lawsuit looms, this one from voting company Smartmatic, which is similarly taking Fox to court in a $2.7 billion defamation case. Documents uncovered in the Dominion lawsuit suggest that the Smartmatic case could be equally detrimental to Fox’s bottom line. 

In 2021, Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for $1.6 billion, but following months of discovery and depositions, both parties reached a pretrial settlement on April 18 for $787.5 million in what The New York Times called “one of the largest defamation settlements in U.S. history.” Stock for Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News, has since dipped, and the network fired Tucker Carlson, generally considered the face of the network, in a sudden ouster potentially tied to fallout from the Dominion suit.

Throughout its 2020 election coverage, Fox aired several segments that falsely alleged that Smartmatic owned Dominion Voting and that software from both companies were used to alter “millions of votes” to sabotage Donald Trump’s electoral chances. Although the majority of the discovery in the Dominion trial pertained specifically to Fox’s coverage of Dominion, some of the files explicitly discussed Smartmatic. 

For instance, Dominion frequently sent emails to top Fox News leadership and network personalities with press clippings that fact-checked the debunked claim that Dominion and Smartmatic were linked. Fox Corp. Senior Vice President Raj Shah and Chief Legal Officer Viet Dinh also testified about having knowledge that the two companies were unrelated. And Dominion filings showed that Fox employees acknowledged that claims made about Smartmatic on the network were untrue. 

Here’s what the Dominion discovery documents reveal about what Fox knew about Smartmatic:

• Across several exhibits, Dominion is shown sending at least 10 documents that clearly stated that it was not connected to Smartmatic in emails to Fox figures that included hosts Pete Hegseth and Maria Bartiromo, White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, and several producers. 
• Exhibit 173 shows that on November 16, 2020, Fox News anchor Dana Perino sent a follow-up email regarding a Sunday Morning Futures interview with Sidney Powell discussing Smartmatic, saying: “This is nuts.” 
• Exhibit 178 shows Mary Schlageter, director of Fox’s “brain room,” sending an email on December 11, 2020, to other Fox employees detailing a request from Fox senior executive Tom Lowell to pull evidence of the instances where Fox pushed back on false claims related to Dominion and Smartmatic, citing a potential legal dispute with Smartmatic. In the email, Lowell acknowledged that “sometimes, we didn’t” challenge on-air lies about Dominion and Smartmatic and noted that instances of when Fox did challenge such lies “won’t be [on] shows like Dobbs, Hannity, etc.,” referring to two Fox prime-time shows. 
• Exhibit 403 shows that The Associated Press’ Ali Swenson sent a request on November 17, 2020, to Fox News Senior Executive Vice President Irena Briganti asking for comment from Fox News, host Lou Dobbs, and Bartiromo on AP’s recent article fact-checking the claim that Dominion and Smartmatic are linked. In a follow-up email to Briganti regarding the reporter request, a redacted email account claimed that “Maria read the Dominion statement a few minutes ago.” 
• Exhibit 656 shows a December 18, 2020, email from Lowell to Meade Cooper, executive vice president of prime-time programming,with the subject line “pls call me when you can.” The email’s body started, “Re; this threatened Smartmatic suit?” Shortly after, Lowell sent a similar email shown in exhibit 658 to Lauren Petterson, president of Fox Business, with the subject line “call me when you can” and “Re: this Smartmatic Suit?” in the body.
• In exhibits 601 and 605, Fox Corp. executives Raj Shah and Viet Dinh both gave depositions stating that they did not believe the false notion that Smartmatic owned Dominion. 

Though it could take years for the Smartmatic case to make it to court, discovery for the lawsuit is currently underway, and it might lead to even more details of Fox’s proclivity to knowingly broadcast false information.