A new batch of text messages and emails have emerged in newly unredacted filings in Smartmatic‘s defamation lawsuit against Fox, including ones showing then-network host Jeanine Pirro‘s desire to boost Donald Trump‘s prospects in the 2020 presidential election.
Smartmatic is suing Fox for its amplification of claims that it was involved in rigging the 2020 presidential election. In its challenge to the lawsuit, Fox is contending that it was merely covering an issue of national importance, while blasting the election systems company’s claim of $2.7 billion in damages.
Read Smartmatic’s filing.
Read Fox’s filing.
In a September, 2020 text message that Pirro sent to Ronna McDaniel, who was then chair of the Republican National Committee, the Fox News host wrote, “I work so hard for the party across the country… I’m the # 1 watched show on all news cable all weekend. I work so hard for the President and party…”
Smartmatic also claimed that Pirro sought a pardon from Trump for her ex husband, Al Pirro, including by speaking to the president’s son, Eric, Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik.
At one point, according to the Smartmatic filing, she spoke with Eric Trump because she “was upset” when she thought the president would not grant a pardon.
Per the filing, “On January 20, 2021, Pirro texted Yanina Fleysher, Bernie Kerik’s girlfriend: ‘U can tell ur boyfriend he’s a selfish bastard.’ ‘I fought for his pardon.’ ‘DO NOT CALL ME.’ ‘FUCK HIM’ ‘I DONT CARE ABT HIM.’” Trump did pardon Al Pirro in the hours before he left office.
Earlier this month, Senate confirmed Pirro as Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. attorney for the District Of Columbia. A spokesperson for her office did not immediately return a request for comment.
As it seeks a summary judgment ruling from New York Judge David Cohen, Smartmatic sought to show how Pirro, Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs in particular featured guests who pushed out claims that the election was stolen and that the company was part of the deception.
Per the Smartmatic filing, Pirro was incensed when Fox News decided not to air her show on Nov. 7, 2020, the day that networks declared that Biden had won the race.
David Clark, who was an executive in charge of weekend programming, wrote to another Fox executive, Meade Cooper, “Bottom line – I don’t trust her to be responsible tomorrow. Her guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will just be a token.”
“Maybe she does not have show tomorrow night,” Cooper wrote back.
“Honestly that would be the wisest course of action,” Clark wrote.
But Pirro was incensed. She wrote in a text message to Sean Hannity, “I’M TIRED OF THE CENSORSHIP AND I’M EMBARRASSED BY HOW THEY CALLED THIS ELECTION…”
“This may be different. I’m now looking for changes. One is to leave u alone,” Hannity wrote back.
Pirro did return to the air the next week, with Trump attorney Sidney Powell as a guest, making unproven claims that software from Smartmatic and Dominion was manipulated.
As the stolen election claims were amplified on air, Smartmatic said that it alerted Fox executives to the falsity of the allegations made on air, while executives themselves thought that figures like Rudy Giuliani and Powell were making outlandish and false claims.
Smartmatic’s filing noted that Jesse Watters, now a top primetime host, wrote to friends and colleagues about Powell that she had “lost it.” Watters referred to a Nov. 19, 2020 press conference that featured Powell and Giuliani, writing, “Fox can’t even touch that. She’s radioactive now.”
Pirro’s show eventually was ended in 2022, when she became a regular on The Five, the top rated show on cable news.
The unredacted filings also showed the extent to which Pirro and Hannity were in Trump’s orbit.
Per the Smartmatic filing, in a text message to Fleysher on Oct. 27, a week before the election, Pirro called Hannity an “egomaniac.” “I was in the Oval with Hariri talking to POTUS. He storms in like he owns the place, throws his papers on the Pres desk and says, you don’t mind if I use your private bathroom, and walks into bathroom within Oval and uses it. Looks at me and says, I got to talk to him. Ie, you go. It’s all abt him, period. No one else matters.”
Still, Smartmatic noted, Pirro in her deposition testimony was asked if she believes that Biden “was legitimately elected President of the United States in the 2020 election.” “I do,” she answered. Trump has continued to make claims that the election was rigged.
The Washington Post first reported on the unredacted filings.
Pirro, Bartiromo and Dobbs’ estate are named as defendants in the lawsuit, along with Fox. Powell also was named.
Pirro, Bartiromo and Dobbs were the most prominent personalities at the network to feature the election rigging claims on their shows.
Per the Smartmatic filing, on Nov. 17, 2020, Bartiromo sent a Signal message to Powell, “Sidney we must keep you out there. Dobbs is considered very opinionated. I am news. How about Friday? I’m off all next week.” She later wrote to Powell, “I am very worried. Please please please overturn this. Bring the evidence. I know you can. Talk Thursday won’t keep bugging you. I know you are drowning in info.” She also texted to Michael Flynn, a Trump ally who had served as his national security adviser: “I’m so worried. I will get these people on. I’m not sure I can do any more ghosn [sic] I’m doing. I am fighting hard.”
Smartmatic’s lawsuit makes some of the same general claims that another voting company, Dominion, made in its lawsuit against the network — that as Fox saw ratings fall in the immediate aftermath of the vote, it sought to lean into stolen election claims. In emails and texts, hosts and executives worried about a viewership backlash after Fox was the first network to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night, the first signal that Trump would lose the race.
A Fox News spokesperson said, “The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech. Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic’s executives getting indicted for bribery charges, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.”
In 2023, Fox settled the Dominion lawsuit for $787.5 million, but in its own filings, its attorneys say that Smartmatic’s case is different. Fox’s legal team has deemed Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion damages claim “pure fiction.”
“While Smartmatic claims scores of lost contract opportunities, there is no evidence that Fox News’s coverage caused a single former, existing, or potential customer to refuse to do business with Smartmatic,” Fox attorneys wrote in their filing. “Many of Smartmatic’s claimed ‘opportunities’ are not even real.”
Fox contends that Smartmatic’s reputation already was harmed by 2020, noting that its president and co-founder and other executives were “under federal criminal investigation for international bribery and money laundering in connection with obtaining one of its largest customer contracts in the Philippines. Facing imminent financial collapse and indictment, Smartmatic saw a litigation lottery ticket in Fox News’s coverage of the 2020 Election.”
The bribery allegations are a reference to Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez and two other officials at the company who face federal corruption charges in Florida.
More recently, Fox has sought public records that related to the process by which Smartmatic was awarded its Los Angeles County contract in 2020, including efforts to woo Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. They cited allegations by federal prosecutors that Smartmatic executives funneled government contract money into a “slush fund” to bribe officials, although the DOJ filing does not make a claim about recipients of that money.
A Smartmatic spokesperson said on Wednesday, “The allegations in the DOJ’s filing are full of misrepresentations. For example, there are no ‘slush funds’—only healthy contingency funds to ensure massive deployments run smoothly. The alleged 2019 bribe in Venezuela is also untethered from reality. Smartmatic ceased all operations in Venezuela in August 2017 after blowing the whistle on the government, and has never sought business there again. The timing of these allegations seems highly suspect, especially when paired with Fox’s aggressive effort to amplify them.”
Fox’s attorneys also contend that its coverage was well within the realm of the public interest. “Some Fox News and Fox Business reporters and commentators—including on its highest-rated shows— were skeptical of the President’s challenges,” its legal team wrote. “Others believed they had merit. But all accurately reported the President’s claims while also providing their opinions on a fast-moving and evolving issue of national importance. None had any motive or desire to harm Smartmatic.”
Fox attorneys also wrote that Smartmatic has fallen short of proving a key ingredient of defamation claims against a public figure: actual malice. The networks’ personalities “did not know whether the allegations were true, but they did know that the President’s attorneys were filing court cases and claiming to have evidence to support them. That is not the stuff of actual malice, and a contrary ruling would be a massive blow to the First Amendment and New York law.”
