You know the Dominion lawsuit is going badly for Fox News when even the judge is dunking on the network’s anchors. After sanctioning Fox for withholding evidence, namely recordings of Rudy Giuliani telling Maria Bartiromo and others that he has no evidence to prove Donald Trump’s voter fraud claims, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis fired off a sarcastic quip about Bartiromo during a pre-trial hearing after watching the tapes.
Via Mediaite:
JUDGE DAVIS: She’s clearly neutral.
MR. SKOKNA: Excuse me, Your Honor?
JUDGE DAVIS: She’s clearly neutral. I’m being sarcastic. I just heard the tape where she’s going to put a defense fund thing. She wanted to override their director to put a campaign thing. Clearly not neutral.
MR. SKOKNA: I believe the evidence will show that that didn’t appear on the actual chyron.
JUDGE DAVIS: Thank goodness.
Bartiromo has been a thorn in Fox News’ side thanks to her fervent pushing of Trump’s “Big Lie” even after being fact-checked by the network itself. She’s also on tape being told by Giuliani that he doesn’t actually have proof that Dominion’s software was tampered with, which unsurprisingly, did not help Fox News’ defense that the network did not act with malice.
Via Mediaite:
BARTIROMO: I’m going to be asking you for as much evidence as you can tell us about these lawsuits. Whatever you can tell us in terms of evidence would be really helpful. Ok, great.
GIULIANI: I can tell you exactly what we have.
BARTIROMO: Perfect. And what about the software, this dominion software
GIULIANI: That’s a little harder–
BARTIROMO: Seems troubling.
Troubling is a bit of an understatement there, Maria. But just to put on how disastrous the lawsuit is going for Fox, Bill O’Reilly thinks the whole thing is a “catastrophe.” He also thinks Rupert Murdoch‘s Logan Roy-like aversion to settling screwed the network, and now they’re forced to go through the highly damaging trial. Other than that, it’s going pretty great for them.
(Via Mediaite)