New Dominion filing: Rupert Murdoch provided Jared Kushner with confidential information about Biden campaign ads

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published

A newly released bombshell filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News has revealed previously unknown details about Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s knowledge of the network’s lies about voter fraud and Dominion after the 2020 election. 

According to the filing, Murdoch was closely tied to White House senior adviser Jared Kushner during the 2020 campaign and provided him with confidential previews of the Biden campaign’s political ads and strategies. From the filing (citations removed):

During Trump’s campaign, Rupert provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy … (providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public).

The filing also revealed Kushner called Murdoch on the night of the election about the network calling Arizona for Biden, saying, “This is terrible,” though Murdoch at that point already “knew no fraud had occurred.”

The defamation lawsuit has already exposed the inner workings of Fox News, specifically regarding the network’s response to false claims of election fraud from former President Donald Trump’s lawyers. In a motion for summary judgment made public on February 16, Dominion’s lawyers revealed: 

  • Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson tried to get a colleague fired for accurately fact-checking Trump’s false claims about Dominion.
  • Laura Ingraham’s producer knew the voter fraud claims were baseless and texted an executive: “This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm—as many times as I’ve told Laura it’s bs, she sees shit posters and trump tweeting about it.”
  • Hannity knew Trump lawyer Sidney Powell was selling lies about the election, but he repeatedly offered her a platform to spread her false message.
  • Two days after the election, Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier acknowledged, “There is NO evidence of fraud. None.”
  • Murdoch emailed Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott that the network “should concentrate on Georgia” for the upcoming U.S. Senate runoff election by “helping any way we can,” laying bare Fox News’ partisan goals.
  • Top stars and executives knew the election fraud claims were “crazy” and “reckless” but continued to push them regardless.

The filing released on February 16 persuasively argues that Fox News embraced voter fraud conspiracy theories that executives and on-air personalities knew were false at least partly out of fear that viewers would turn to competitor Newsmax, which had gone all-in on the absurd claims. Media Matters President Angelo Carusone argued the filing showed Fox News’ misinformation campaign was operating on an “industrial scale.”