The latest filings in Smartmatic's lawsuit against Fox News revealed that host Jesse Watters did not believe the election fraud claims but still texted his colleague Greg Gutfeld to say he thought Fox would get "incredible" ratings if they "went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL."
In 2021, Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox, alleging that the network's coverage falsely accused the voting technology company of committing fraud in the 2020 election to steal the victory from President Donald Trump and give it to President Joe Biden, and that these false statements damaged the company's reputation and resulted in its employees being subjected to death threats and harassment.
The case has a number of similarities with the defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by another voting technology company, Dominion Voting Systems, which settled in April 2023 for a stunning $787.5 million just as the trial was ready to begin in Delaware.
Discovery in the Dominion case revealed a trove of emails, text messages, and other communications between the network's executives and on-air personalities admitting they knew the election fraud claims were false, mocking Trump's attorneys and surrogates as "crazy" for pushing them, and fretting about falling in the ratings to upstart competitors like Newsmax and OANN if they didn't indulge MAGA viewers.
Likewise, the Smartmatic case has unearthed another pile of embarrassing and incriminating internal communications from Fox, some of which were included in a redacted motion filed in June. Smartmatic, supported by a motion to intervene successfully filed by The New York Times, has pushed for these redactions to be reduced, if not eliminated, arguing that it was important for "fairness and transparency," as a spokesperson for the company told Mediaite earlier this month.
"While Fox would prefer to keep the public in the dark, Smartmatic believes open proceedings serve public accountability and has opposed Fox's many attempts to keep its lies from being exposed," the spokesperson added. "We remain committed to moving this case to trial and holding Fox accountable for its lies without obscuring the public's view."
The new filings with updated redactions include Smartmatic's 1) Motion for Summary Judgment on Liability and 2) Statement of Undisputed Material Facts in Support of its Motion for Summary Judgment. Among the newly-revealed information are text messages from Jeanine Pirro boasting about helping Trump while at Fox News and anchor Bret Baier expressing concern about the need to "fact-check this crap."
Watters, previously the host of Watters' World and the current host of Jesse Watter Primetime and one of the co-hosts of The Five along with Gutfeld, is mentioned several times in the newly-unredacted sections, fretting about the perceived threat to Fox's ratings and expressing skepticism about the election fraud claims.
The day after the 2020 election, Watters texted Megan Albano, one of his producers reacting to anger from Fox's audience after the network's Decision Desk was the first to call Arizona for Biden. "There's an audience uprising vs. Fox like I've never seen," he wrote.
On November 19, 2020, Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell held a press conference in which they made multiple accusations against Dominion and Smartmatic. Later that same day, "Watters asked his team to 'take Sidney Powell's assertions about Dominion and Smartmatic and chase down what we were able to verify,'" Smartmatic's motion stated.
Several text from Watters to his colleagues during this period describe how he thought Powell especially had "lost it" and was "radioactive now" because "[w]hat she is peddling is out there."
On November 20, 2020, Maria Louka, a producer on Watters' show, sent him "a seven-page email" that described seven claims Powell had made as "UNVERIFIED," including her claims the voting software was created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez, that the software has a "feature" that allows a user to "drag and drop any number of batches of votes to the candidate of your choice or simply throw them away," that there was "mathematical evidence in a number of states of massive quantities of Trump votes being trashed," that there was "an algorithm that runs that automatically flips all the votes," that the software counted some votes "multiple times," and so on.
Then, the November 21, 2020 episode of Watters' World "referenced Smartmatic in connection with fraud in the 2020 election," the motion described, with Lou Dobbs appearing as a guest and "discussing a 'cyber-attack' using voting machines to steal the 2020 election" while "Watters presented an 'investigation' into Dominion and Smartmatic."
On December 5, 2020, Watters sent a text to Gutfeld: "Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL."
The motion also lists several quotes from Watters' testimony acknowledging he did not believe the election fraud claims, either in general or specifically against Smartmatic.
When he was asked, "You have seen no evidence that Smartmatic Technology was used to switch votes during the 2020 Election, correct?" Watters replied, "I've seen no evidence that Smartmatic Technology switched votes in the 2020 Election in the United States."
Watters also testified that he never "bought into" the claims that "software and voting machines" like Smartmatic's were used to switch votes, calling such claims "pretty out there."
Fox News provided a statement to Mediaite: