Citizen Cartwright

The Fox, Dominion settlement

As a packed courtroom was waiting for opening statements to begin on Tuesday, "gasps filled the air" when Judge Eric Davis told the jury shortly before 4 p.m. that the two parties had resolved the matter, says The New York Times. 

 

Fox News and its parent company Fox Corp. had agreed to settle the case for $787.5 million.

 

The settlement, one of the biggest ever in a defamation case, came with this admission from Fox News:

 

"We acknowledge the Court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX's continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

 

Dominion Voting Systems had alleged that Fox stars, executives, journalists and guests defamed the election tech company for segments in which conspiracies held it had switched votes for then-President Trump to Democratic challenger Biden.

 

"Dominion started this case because Fox's defamatory statements had severely damaged its reputation,” says Tom Wienner, a retired Michigan corporate litigator who's been following the case closely at the request of NPR. "By largely trying its case in the court of public opinion, Dominion has gone a long way toward restoring its good name. In the process, of course, Fox's own reputation has been seriously undermined.”

 

It's uncommon for defamation suits to get to trial, in part because the bar for proving “actual malice” — the legal standard that requires plaintiffs to show that defendants knew what they were saying was a lie, or had a reckless disregard for the truth — is so high, says the Times. It's rarer yet for one to feature the volume of evidence that Dominion had amassed against Fox.

 

In the run-up to trial, Dominion publicly released internal communications among Fox executives, hosts and producers that revealed how the country’s most-watched cable news network set in motion a strategy to win back viewers who'd tuned out after Trump’s loss. 

 

Those communications showed how employees at Fox expressed serious doubts about and, at times, were scornful of Trump and his allies as they spread lies about voter fraud.

 

Some Fox hosts privately described their colleagues as “reckless” for endorsing Trump’s false claims, acknowledging that there was “no evidence” to back them up. Yet for weeks, Fox continued to give a platform to election deniers despite the doubts about their credibility. Dominion challenged statements that were made on multiple programs on multiple nights. Typically, defamation cases involve just a single disputed statement, the Times says.

 

The settlement deal is a significant amount of money, even for a company the size of Fox, says The Associated Press. It represents about a quarter of the $2.96 billion the company reported earning last year before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — a figure often used to approximate a company’s cash flow.

 

The settlement is about half of what Dominion was asking for in the trial. But Elie Honig, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, says, “I didn’t think there was any way they would get $1.6 billion — even when they proved their case, even if they proved it overwhelmingly to a jury. Let’s remember, by its own estimation, Dominion valued the entire company at somewhere between $30 and $80 million. This settlement is 10 times the value of Dominion as an entire company. That’s how strong a statement this is with this number.”

 

Fox faces a separate $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic USA, a voting-machine company that’s making claims similar to Dominion's. 

 

I’m not seeing any mention of the settlement on Fox News' main web page this morning. Here is what I found when I searched the site.

Frank Luntz advice to GOP candidates on beating Trump

The longtime pollster and GOP strategist says he’s run two dozen focus groups on why Donald Trump still inspires so much loyalty and how someone else can win the Republican nomination in 2024.

 

Here is his advice for GOP candidates, in a New York Times guest essay:

 

— While Trump’s GOP support is wide and deep, "roughly a third of Trump voters prioritize the character of the country and the people who run it — and that’s enough to change the 2024 outcome.”

 

— There’s a clear way to appeal to Republican voters firmly focused on the future rather than on re-litigating the past. It starts with a simple campaign pitch along the lines “We can do better. We must do better.”

 

— GOP candidates should get endorsements from Trump voters who have a message like “Donald Trump had my back in 2016. Now, it’s all about him. I didn’t leave Donald Trump. He left me.”

 

— Compliment Trump’s presidency while you criticize the person.

 

— Appeal to Trump’s elderly voters by making it about their grandchildren: “We mistake loud for leadership, condemnation for commitment. The values we teach our children should be the values we see in our president.”

 

— The increase in the annual deficit under Trump is the third-biggest, relative to the size of the economy, of any presidential administration, Luntz says. A campaign pitch he suggests: “We can’t afford these deficits. We can’t afford this debt. We can’t afford Donald Trump.”

 

— During his 2016 campaign, Trump condemned President Obama repeatedly for his occasional rounds of golf, promising not to travel at taxpayer expense, Luntz says. Yet Trump played nearly 300 rounds of golf on his personal courses, costing taxpayers about $150 million in additional security. This could be lethal on the debate stage: “While more than half of America was working paycheck to paycheck, he was working on his short game. And you paid for it!”

 

— Trump surely loses if Republicans come to believe that a vote for him in the primaries means the election of Biden in the general.

 

— You need to get at least one conservative commentator on your side by being as tough as Trump but more committed publicly to traditional conservative ideology like ending wasteful Washington spending. “Some people want to make a statement. I want to make a difference.”

Biden says he won't veto GOP-led legislation blocking D.C. crime law

"I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule — but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections — such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” the president tweeted on Thursday.

 

Biden’s reversal of his previous position came after Republicans seized on the law as a way to put Democrats on the spot about crime, says long-time New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse. It's an issue the GOP has been working to turn into a major liability for Biden and his party, portraying them as lax on enforcement.

 

Biden’s shift eases pressure on Senate Democrats, sparing them a vote defying a veto threat and potentially a decision on whether to override him.

 

Crime long has been a complicated political issue for Biden, who helped write a 1994 tough-on-crime bill. Then he had to backtrack on it during his 2020 presidential race, when deadly police assaults on people of color, mass incarceration and violations of civil rights by law enforcement were top issues for Democrats, particularly the party’s progressive base, says the Times.

 

Now, with public worries about crime increasing, Biden is pivoting again with his decision to allow the District code to be overturned.

Biden’s decision is a blow to D.C. home rule, and the issue is likely not the last time Republicans will challenge local laws in the heavily Democratic capital city, the Times says.

 

The district lacks the rights that states have to make and amend laws, explains The Associated Press. While Congress has allowed the city’s residents some powers of home rule, it's retained veto powers over district government actions. District residents also don't have voting members of Congress.

 

If the legislation is signed into law, it would be the first time in three decades that Congress has overturned a District law.

 

Republicans are joining Biden in citing the decision by Mayor Muriel Bowser to veto the law as a persuasive factor. She later was overridden by the D.C. Council.

“First rule of politics,” says Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “Don’t get to the left of D.C.’s mayor.”

 

Here is the local reaction to Biden’s switch, from The Washington Post.

 

And here, from DCist/WAMU.

Which America did you see in the State of the Union speech, GOP response?

As you know, we humans like information that reflects what we already think. And as you also know, I believe we’re better off focusing on what we share as humans instead of what divides us.

 

So, of course, I prefer what The Washington Post calls President Biden’s "political message of empathy and help for ordinary Americans“ to Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders’ Republican response that the choice between Republicans and Democrats is "between normal or crazy.”

 

On Tuesday night, "In the first State of the Union address of a new era of divided government that at times turned strikingly rowdy, Mr. Biden vowed to cooperate with the other party but offered no concessions to it,” says The New York Times. "Instead, he called on Republicans to embrace his program of raising taxes on the wealthy and extending social aid to the needy, citing bipartisan legislation passed when Democrats were in charge."

 

He said, “To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there’s no reason we can’t work together and find consensus on important things in this Congress as well.” 

 

"The president’s first major encounter with the newly empowered House Republicans featured stark moments of unscripted drama the likes of which were rarely seen during State of the Union addresses of the past,” says the Times.

 

When he mentioned the fentanyl crisis, introducing a father who lost a daughter to an overdose, some Republicans heckled him over drugs coming into the country, shouting, “The border! The border! It’s your fault!”

 

"The 80-year-old president seemed to draw energy from the feisty exchanges, speaking for 73 minutes to an audience watching to see how he met the test,” says the Times.

 

Even when he was promoting bipartisanship, Biden "relished jabbing Republicans,” says the Times. At one point, he noted that many Republicans voted against his infrastructure package yet still asked for money from it for their districts.

“Don’t worry,” he told them. “I promised I’d be a president for all Americans. We’ll fund these projects. And I’ll see you at the groundbreaking.”

 

Here is a fact check of Biden’s speech, from The Washington Post.

 

And here is a transcript of his speech, from AP.

 

Here is Sanders' response, on YouTube.

Tonight’s State of the Union address (including ChatGPT versions)

President Biden delivers this year’s address at 9 p.m. EST. Here is the how-to-watch and what-to-watch-for, from The Associated Press.

 

Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former White House press secretary for President Trump, will give the GOP response. As the nation’s youngest governor, at 40, she’ll be a counterpoint to Biden, 80.

 

As Biden delivers his speech in the House chamber, he’ll be looking out at a more diverse group of Republicans than in the past, says AP. 

 

For example, there are 33 GOP women in the House, according to the Center for Women in American Politics, up from 13 in 2019. But there are no African American GOP women in the House, compared with 27 African American women on the Democratic side. 

 

AP asked the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT to come up with short versions of the speech, as it might have been written by people including Shakespeare, Elvis, Martin Luther King, and a 10-year-old.

What does it really mean when an ex-official has classified documents?

When I was a congressional staffer working on international environmental issues, at one point I spent several weeks in Europe, meeting with EU officials in Brussels; U.N. officials in Geneva, Switzerland; and at a conference with science diplomats in Vienna.

 

In Geneva, I had the pleasure of working with my uncle, a long-time science diplomat at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. there, on climate change, endangered species and other issues. 

 

One day when we were in his office, he handed me a document marked “classified.” I was surprised, since I didn’t have a security clearance allowing me access to classified information. But the document was just the when and where of an ordinary meeting we were attending.

 

And one possible reason classified documents go astray is that too many documents are classified in the first place, experts say. The federal government classifies more than 50 million documents each year, according to The New York Times.

 

Concern about overclassification dates back as far as 1956, when a Defense Department committee set up to tackle the issue during President Eisenhower’s first term said overclassification had reached “serious proportions” and recommended an overhaul.  

 

In many agencies, officials “face no downsides for over-classifying something,” says Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and former special counsel at the Pentagon. “But if you under-classify something, really dire consequences could come for you.”

 

Of those more than 50 million documents classified every year, just 5 to 10 percent warrant the classification, Hathaway estimates, based on her experience at the Pentagon.

 

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Intelligence Committee, says: “One of the reasons why perhaps people become lackadaisical and less than vigilant in protecting classified information is the experience of most members of Congress when you go … get briefed [in a] secure facility on whatever it is the administration wants to brief you on and you come out of there saying, ‘I could have watched cable news and read the newspaper as much as they were willing to tell me.' And so, they think, ‘Well, this is not that big a deal. You say it’s secret, but this is not a secret. It’s open source stuff. …’"

 

U.S. officials have offered to brief as soon as this week the “Gang of Eight” — the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and of both intelligence committees — on their investigation into the classified documents found at former President Trump’s Florida residence and President Biden’s Delaware home and former private office, The Associated Press reported on Sunday.

 

But the briefing isn't expected to include direct access to the documents that were seized, AP says. Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked for that access in a letter last week to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

 

So will we, the public, be able to assess the actual significance of these documents? Seems like it’ll be classified.  

Special counsel appointed in Biden classified documents probe

Attorney General Garland on Thursday appointed a special counsel to investigate the presence of classified documents at the Washington office President Biden used after leaving the Obama administration and at Biden’s house in Delaware.

 

Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney appointed by former President Trump, will lead the investigation.

 

Here is a profile of Hur, from NBC News.

 

In November, Garland appointed Jack Smith, a veteran war crimes prosecutor, to oversee concurrent investigations into Trump’s handling of classified documents and his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. 

 

"Though the situations are factually and legally different, the discovery of classified documents at two separate locations tied to Biden — as well as the appointment of a new special counsel — would almost certainly complicate any prosecution that the department might bring against Trump," says The Associated Press.

 

Here is an explainer of the role of a special counsel, from AP.