Judge delays trial over Fox News and Trump election fraud claims

The Delaware judge overseeing a voting machine company’s €1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News says he is delaying the start of the trial until Tuesday.

The trial, which has drawn international interest, had been scheduled to start on Monday morning with jury selection and opening statements. However, Judge Eric M Davis said on Sunday the proceedings would be delayed. He did not give a reason then or in his brief remarks from the bench on Monday morning. “This does not seem unusual to me,” Judge Davis said, explaining that he had rarely been part of a trial that did not have some kind of delay. “I am continuing the matter until tomorrow.”

The case centres on whether Fox defamed Dominion Voting Systems by spreading false claims that the company rigged the 2020 presidential vote to prevent former president Donald Trump’s re-election.

The case has opened an unprecedented window into the inner workings of the country’s leading conservative news network. In the run-up to trial, Fox has handed over tens of thousands of emails and text messages exchanged among its hosts, producers and executives.

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Many of them revealed that there was widespread doubt inside the network over Mr Trump’s false claims that he had been cheated of victory.

The case is considered a landmark test of First Amendment protections for the news media and has been closely watched by legal and media analysts. Dominion’s voting machines became the focus of pro-Trump conspiracy theories that wrongly implicated the company’s technology in a plot to flip votes from Mr Trump to Joe Biden.

On Monday, the courtroom was filled with reporters from around the world awaiting word on when they could expect to hear opening statements from both parties and exactly what the delay was about.

Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and founder Rupert Murdoch are among the people who had been expected to testify.

Dominion Voting Systems, an elections technology company, filed the libel lawsuit against Fox in early 2021, claiming that Fox hosts and guests repeatedly uttered lies about its role in a fictitious plot to steal the election despite knowing the claims, which had been pushed by Mr Trump and his supporters, were not true.

Fox has said that it was reporting on newsworthy allegations involving a presidential election and insisted that its broadcasts were protected under the First Amendment as commentary and news. It has also challenged Dominion’s damages claim, arguing that the company vastly overvalued itself and has not suffered the blows to its business that it says. - New York Times/AP