Fox News Settles Defamation Case With Venezuelan Businessman
In a letter to a New York judge, the parties said they had reached a settlement in a case related to claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, but did not disclose the terms.
Fox News and one of its former hosts, Lou Dobbs, have settled a defamation suit with a Venezuelan businessman whom the network linked to voting-system fraud in the 2020 election.
In a letter filed on Saturday to a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, the parties said they had reached a confidential settlement, although they did not disclose the terms.
“This matter has been resolved amicably by both sides,” a spokesperson for Fox News said in an email. “We have no further comment.”
The settlement was disclosed days before jury selection this week in a major defamation case that Fox News is defending. That case, a $1.6 billion lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, says that Fox News lied about voter fraud in the 2020 election, and that Fox hosts and guests repeatedly made false claims about Dominion machines and their supposed role in a plot to steal the election from President Donald J. Trump.
In that trial, which is expected to begin on April 17, a jury will weigh whether Fox spread false claims about Dominion while knowing that the claims were untrue, and it will determine any damages.
“Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall,” the Fox spokesperson said.
In the case of the Venezuelan businessman, Majed Khalil, Mr. Dobbs and Sidney Powell, a regular guest on Fox News, said on the air and in related Twitter posts that Dominion was using software to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr., or to add votes for Mr. Biden.
One of the tweets falsely said Mr. Khalil was “the effective ‘COO’ of the election project.” In an earlier complaint, Mr. Khalil said neither Fox News nor Mr. Dobbs had reached out to him for comment.
Fox Business canceled Mr. Dobbs’s weekday show in February 2021.
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