by WASHINGTON — The top two Democrats in Congress are asking Fox News executives not to spread “serious propaganda” about the 2020 election and demanding that commentators who falsely suggest the election was stolen admit on air that they were wrong.
The letter to Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., comes a day after an unsealed filing revealed that Murdoch had acknowledged that some of the network’s commentators endorsed false claims by former President Donald Trump. An earlier filing detailed doubts about Trump’s claims raised by some of Fox’s star behind-the-scenes personalities.
Referring to the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot by Trump supporters, Schumer and Jeffries said that “the spread of this false propaganda could not only encourage supporters of the Big Lie to engage in further acts of political violence, but also deeply weakens and our faith in general. democracy and harms our country in countless other ways.”
The letter comes as the network is embroiled in a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. The company, which sells electronic voting hardware and software, alleges that some Fox News employees intentionally boosted false claims by Trump supporters that Dominion machines had changed votes in the 2020 election and argues that Fox provided a platform for visitors to make false and defamatory statements about the company;
Fox Corp.’s lawyers argued that Dominion provided “zero evidentiary support” for the allegation that senior Fox Corp. executives had any role in the creation or publication of the statements at issue. And they have noted that when polling technology companies denied the claims of Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials.
Schumer said in an interview Wednesday that the letter is a “first step” and that Democrats may consider other ways to try to force the company to publicly acknowledge the false information. If they don’t, “then we have to decide where we’re going to go,” Schumer said.
He did not say whether the Democratic-led Senate would try to subpoena Murdoch to testify.
Schumer said many people believe false claims that the election was stolen because they saw it on Fox News.
“The number one destructive force in the decline of our democracy is the lies spread by these commentators every day for years,” Schumer said.
Trump, who has announced he will run again in 2024, continued to push the election fraud claims even after all 50 states ratified President Joe Biden’s victory and after courts, lawmakers and election officials across the country rejected the allegations. of the former president and his allies.
Trump’s own attorney general at the time, William Barr, told a House committee on January 6 of last year that he had told Trump that his claims were “bulls—.” Barr said he had looked into the allegations and found no evidence that any of them were true. Trump was “disengaged from reality,” Barr said.
A final report released by the House panel on Jan. 6 in December cited several instances of Trump’s own advisers telling him he lost the election and advising him to stop pushing the false claims.
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