Sean Hannity

A $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News has pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of the powerful conservative cable network in the days after the 2020 US presidential election.

Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-machine manufacturer, alleges that Fox knowingly aired false allegations that their devices helped Joe Biden and the Democrats "steal" the election.

To make their case, the company has called dozens of Fox executives and journalists to testify in depositions and subpoenaed thousands of pages of their text messages and emails.

Fox News host Sean Hannity was “privately disgusted” with former President Trump’s actions following his loss in the 2020 election, despite showing steadfast support on air, according to statements made by the network’s owner revealed in a new court filing this week.

The revelation came in the latest court filing made by Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News and billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch for defamation, seeking $1.6 billion in damages for what it calls the network’s repeated airing of false information about voter fraud.

Fox News is refusing to run an ad from political action group MoveOn that accuses the conservative cable giant of “lying to its viewers” over the 2020 election, the progressive organization said on Monday.

The commercial, which MoveOn said they hoped to run nationally on the right-wing network, spotlights a slew of texts from the recent legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6-billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Nikki Haley has been making presidential-campaign-sounding noises for months. Last June, while speaking at a fundraiser in Iowa — a casual trip to the state that just so happens to host the first primary caucuses — the former South Carolina governor said she’d run in 2024 “if there’s a place for me.” Earlier this week, she blasted Mike Pompeo, another speculative 2024 contender, for peddling “lies and gossip” in his upcoming memoir.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity may have uncritically elevated baseless conspiracy theories about widespread fraud committed by voting machine suppliers in the 2020 election — even though he didn’t think they were true.

That’s the latest revelation out of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, which is slated to go to trial in April in a Delaware court.

Sean Hannity’s dual role as Fox News host and Republican political operative creates so many conflicts of journalistic ethics that it is difficult to keep track of them all. So it comes as little surprise that Fox, a GOP propaganda channel, is increasing Hannity’s role in the network’s election coverage as the 2022 midterms approach.