CNN’s Oliver Darcy: Will Fox News ‘Settle In The Next Few Weeks With Smartmatic’ After Blockbuster Dominion Case?

CNN’s Oliver Darcy wondered aloud if Fox News will “move to settle in the next few weeks with Smartmatic” after the blockbuster settlement in the Dominion defamation lawsuit.

Fox News agreed to a settlement this week that included a $787.5 million payout in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit that was just about to play out in a weeks-long trial after volumes of damaging revelations were publicized pretrial.

The settlement has drawn criticism because it also included a tepid and conspicuously non-apologetic “acknowledgment” of “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” and did not require an apology or retraction.

Next up for Fox is the $2.7 billion Smartmatic lawsuit, in which Smartmatic lead counsel Erik Connolly has already said he will demand a full retraction and apology from Fox.

On Friday morning’s edition of CNN News Central, anchor John Berman asked Darcy for his thoughts on the Smartmatic suit, and Darcy noted a flurry of recent settlements in other matters:

BERMAN: All right, here now, CNN’s senior media reporter Oliver Darcy.

So, Smartmatic wants, what, like more than twice the money that Dominion settled for and a full apology. How much of this is posturing pre-trial?

OLIVER DARCY, CNN SENIOR MEDIA REPORTER: That’s right, John, Fox’s legal – their legal troubles are far from over. And that’s because of this Smartmatic lawsuit, which I — as you pointed out, is even bigger than the Dominion lawsuit that they just settled.

The question I think becomes, will Fox move to try to settle this out of court before that excruciating process we saw play out in the Dominion case where they go to discovery and depositions comes into play here. This case is going through the New York courts, so it’s going a lot slower than the Dominion case, which was in Delaware. And so this won’t theoretically occur until next year where they would start taking those depositions. So Fox has some time, but will they move to settle this and make sure that this doesn’t end up being a further embarrassment to the company going forward?

I should also note, John, that Fox, in the past two weeks, has been settling or ending a lot of these defamation cases against it. A couple weeks ago they settled a — with the Venezuelan businessman who had sued over election lies that he was basically swept up in. They, of course, settled that Dominion lawsuit just days ago. And last night, Lachlan Murdoch, who had filed a lawsuit against a small Australian publisher, he dropped his defamation lawsuit against that company. And so you’re seeing the Murdochs really try to end a lot of these legal entanglements that they’re in. Will this mean that they also move to settle in the next few weeks with Smartmatic? We don’t know. But as you pointed out, they’re seeking more money than Dominion, and they also want that full retraction, which we know was a big sticking point when it came to settling that Dominion lawsuit.

BERMAN: Oliver, I know you’ll be watching it very closely.

Oliver Darcy, thanks so much.

Fox News has released this statement from a spokesperson: “We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025. As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

Watch above via CNN News Central.