Lawyers for a voting machine company that’s suing Fox News want to question founder Rupert Murdoch about his contentious efforts to change his family trust, the attorneys told a court Monday.
Election-tech company Smartmatic's $2.7 billion defamation suit regards Fox's reporting on 2020 voting fraud claims. But Smartmatic’s attorneys suggest the separate succession fight over Murdoch's media empire might shed light on any Fox Corp. involvement in editorial matters.
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It's an important, if technical, question as Smartmatic seeks to hold the deep-pocketed Fox parent company responsible for statements that the news network aired. Fox contends that there's no such liability and that it was engaging in journalism, not defamation, when it broadcast election-fraud allegations made by then-President Donald Trump 's attorneys.
Rupert Murdoch may already have given a deposition — out-of-court questioning under oath — in the defamation suit. Such records aren't public at this stage, but plans for his deposition were briefly mentioned at a 2022 hearing.
Smartmatic now is seeking to talk to Murdoch about his efforts to rewrite his plans for his businesses after his death.
The matter is playing out behind closed doors and in sealed files in a Nevada probate court. The New York Times has reported that Rupert Murdoch wants to keep his eldest son, Lachlan, in charge of the conglomerate's newspapers and television networks in order to ensure a continued conservative editorial outlook.
Smartmatic wants to get the 93-year-old patriarch on record while the probate matter plays out, company attorney Edward Wipper told a judge Monday.
Fox News lawyer K. Winn Allen said the probate case “has nothing at all to do with” Smartmatic's claims and is “not appropriate” fodder for the suit.
Fox Corp. declined to comment after court.
Fox News' lawyers, meanwhile, want Smartmatic to provide records about a U.S. federal criminal case against people, including Smartmatic co-founder Roger Piñate, accused of scheming to bribe a Filipino election official. Piñate has pleaded not guilty.
Smartmatic isn't charged in the criminal case, and Smartmatic attorneys have said the matter was irrelevant to the defamation suit. Fox lost prior bids for a court order to get the information, but a hearing on the network's renewed request is set next week.
It's unclear how soon Judge David B. Cohen will decide on that request or on Smartmatic's bid to dig into the Murdoch family trust case. Both requests are part of pretrial information-gathering, and no trial date has been set.
Smartmatic says it was a small player, working only with California's heavily Democratic Los Angeles County, in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
In subsequent Fox News appearances, Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell portrayed Smartmatic as part of a multi-state scheme to steal the vote from the Republican.
Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in battleground states and Trump’s own attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they uncover any credible evidence that the vote was tainted. Dozens of courts, including by judges whom Trump had appointed, rejected his fraud claims.
Fox News ultimately aired an interview with an election technology expert who refuted the allegations against Smartmatic — an interview done after the company demanded a retraction.
The network is countersuing Smartmatic, claiming it violated a New York law against baseless suits aimed at squelching reporting or criticism on public issues.
The New York defamation suit is one of several stemming from conservative-oriented news outlets' reports on Trump’s 2020 vote-rigging claims. Smartmatic recently settled with One America News Network and Newsmax.
Fox News settled for $787 million last year with Dominion Voting Systems, another election-technology company that sued over conspiracy theories blaming its election equipment for Trump’s 2020 loss.