Dominion’s C.E.O.: We Settled the Lawsuit Against
Fox News, but We’re Not Done Yet
April 21,
2023
By John
Poulos
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/opinion/dominion-ceo-fox-lawsuit.html
Mr. Poulos
is a co-founder and the chief executive of Dominion Voting Systems.
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Vindication.
Shame. Triumph. Tragedy. Surrender. These are a few of the characterizations
I’ve heard following our recent settlement with Fox News in our historic
defamation case against the network for its lies about Dominion Voting Systems
and the 2020 election.
The public
has complicated feelings about our decision to end this trial before it ever
began, and that’s OK. It’s bittersweet for us, too.
We’ve seen
the havoc that lies create for societies, democracies, businesses and families.
Over the past two and a half years, I’ve watched it firsthand. My customers,
employees, family and friends face harassment, discrimination and threats to
this day.
But for us
at Dominion, when we reflect on the case and its outcome, we think about our
first and foremost goal: accountability.
On Tuesday,
when we proudly walked into the Delaware Superior Court, we were going to
trial. We knew our case was incredibly strong, and I still believe that at the
end of the six-week trial, the jury most likely would have agreed.
We had
reviewed more than a million internal Fox documents and deposed dozens of
people, and Fox’s legal team had reviewed more than a million of ours. Then, in
a summary judgment ruling on March 31, the court allowed the case to proceed
and dismantled many of Fox’s legal defenses, ruling its claims about Dominion
were clearly false and it could not seek refuge in arguments about the lies’
newsworthiness.
At trial,
we weren’t expecting any more shocking revelations — we frankly didn’t need any
more. From the earliest days of discovery, we knew our employees, our customers
and the American public needed to see what we had found, and that is exactly
what we presented in our pretrial filings and exhibits.
With that
goal now met, we were focused on our obligations to our people — many of whom
were set to testify, when they would recount trauma caused by the threats,
violence and hate surfaced by lies about Dominion. I’d already seen some of
them suffer emotionally during their depositions, and I worried deeply that a
trial and associated media attention would cause only more lasting pain.
The
settlement we negotiated accomplished two critical goals: allowing our
employees and customers to move forward, and hitting Fox where it hurt most —
its bank account.
What was
missing was an apology, so I myself drafted one for it that I thought would be
appropriate to include. When I read it to my business partner, he asked what I
thought about mandating Fox issue an apology that would be forced, insincere
and limited. At that moment, I threw my draft in the garbage.
An hour
later, when the Fox board approved the wire payment for $787.5 million — one of
the largest known defamation settlements in history — Fox acknowledged what we
needed it to acknowledge: spreading false claims comes with a huge price tag.
Even so,
nothing can ever fully compensate for what happened. The stain on my company’s
reputation and our employees’ and customers’ emotional scars can only fade.
They won’t ever vanish.
If we could,
we would trade it all in a heartbeat to go back in time to get our reputation
back. But I take solace in the fact that the public has seen the enormous
mountain of evidence proving what Fox did, and Fox paid dearly for it.
Our
settlement with Fox is just one win on a long road. We have six more defamation
cases pending: against Mike Lindell and his company, MyPillow; Rudy Giuliani;
Sidney Powell; Patrick Byrne; One America News Network; and Newsmax. We will
not stop until we hold all parties to full account.
By the way,
it’s never too late for an apology. And if one day it comes of Fox’s own
volition, we will know it was real.
Mr. Poulos
is a co-founder and the chief executive of Dominion Voting Systems.
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