There is lots of speculation about the reason Fox News gave Tucker Carlson the boot.
At this point, we’ve seen dozens of stories questioning if something Carlson said or would have said led to him losing the cable news outlet’s primetime slot.
Some reports questioned if the Dominion settlement had anything to do with it.
Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the news network.
“Fox has admitted to telling lies,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said at a news conference.
WATCH:
BREAKING: Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos calls settlement with Fox News "historic," adding: "Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company... nothing can ever make up for that." https://t.co/0hppoGCI1J pic.twitter.com/6ieXrHXEGL
— ABC News (@ABC) April 18, 2023
Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson said the settlement represents “vindication and accountability.”
WATCH:
“Lies have consequences. The truth does not know red or blue.”
— Dominion Voting Systems lawyer Justin Nelson celebrates Fox News’ settlement of $787.5 million over its lies about Dominion in the wake of the 2020 election, sparing Fox News from a potentially damaging trial pic.twitter.com/1BC2CHUQ4j
— The Recount (@therecount) April 18, 2023
Now, Dominion executives are breaking their silence about the case.
Dominion officials reportedly want all the text messages that included Tucker Carlson to become public.
According to the Daily Mail, much of the lawsuit remains partially or fully redacted.
Dominion is also taking credit for Tucker Carlson's "firing" from Fox News.
'We hope it all gets un-redacted': Dominion says there are MORE Tucker Carlson texts about Fox execs that are yet to become public - as they take credit for his firing
via https://t.co/YqXcrAKdU0. Dominion takes credit for firing Tucker. https://t.co/XJ7rc9gmq1— Mark Groubert (@lordbuckly) May 1, 2023
From Daily Mail:
In their first interview since the lawsuit was settled unexpectedly, Dominion's CEO John Poulos and Stephen Shackelford, a lawyer who was involved in the case, told Axios they now want the full record to become unredacted.
ADVERTISEMENTThey also took credit for Carlson's firing, which came after senior Fox News executives learned what he had been saying in them in text messages that the lawsuit unearthed.
'Dominion did not insist on them firing Tucker Carlson as part of the settlement.
'But the very fact that that's what resulted out of all of this, and it's traceable from the work that Dominion set in motion.. of course I know what’s in the redacted stuff and I can't say anything about it.
'I hope that it all gets un-redacted at some point,' Shackelford, a partner at Susman Godfrey LLP, told Axios.
Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, co-founder of Staple Street Capital which is Dominion's private equity owner, also appeared to take credit for Carlson's firing.
'I think the consequences of the entire strategy that we pursued are starting to reflect themselves.'
He added that Carlson's firing is 'much more profound' than 'some disingenuous apology or forced statement' of wrongdoing. For us to have a meaningful impact, we had to make sure that we got that rock moving.'
Axios had the exclusive interview with the Dominion executives. Below is some of the transcript pertaining to Fox News.
Shackelford: There were a lot of smoking gun documents in the case. For instance, the Rupert Murdoch text about when he was watching the Nov. 19 press conference and saying that was terrible stuff. He knew the truth and yet his enormous asset, Fox News, kept broadcasting the lies. The Tucker Carlson texts where it took him no time at all to figure out that the software stuff was absurd.
It was obvious to everybody that this was crazy and we expected to see internal acknowledgment that this was crazy and false. And that's what we ended up seeing in the end.
Yaghoobzadeh: We made sure that all the attorneys understood that settlement was like a curse word. We didn't want to talk about it.
Our strategy was to go to trial, get to a verdict and accomplish three goals, which were to make sure the truth got exposed, kept Fox accountable, and that we were compensated for the damages they inflicted.
Shackelford: We had a court-ordered mediation in December, although I don't want to answer any questions that would put us crossways with the confidentiality of that process.
The best thing they could have done, which they still could do, is to go on to all their shows where they broadcast these lies and, in a believable way that's not like a hostage video, tell their audience the truth. And maybe things might have been somewhat different had they done that at any point, let alone early on.
Did the Dominion settlement lead to Fox News yanking Tucker Carlson off the air?
Who knows?
Perhaps there's another reason the mainstream media won't report?
Read further speculation on the Dominion-Fox News settlement below:
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