Dominion Voting Systems can”t bring up the January 6 Capitol riots during its upcoming defamation trial against Fox News, a Delaware judge ruled on Tuesday, according to CNN.
Dominion filed the lawsuit in March of 2021, suing the network for $1.6 billion and claiming Fox defamed it by repeatedly airing false claims about the company”s machines and its accompanying software. Court records and testimony revealed that many Fox hosts and executives didn”t believe the claims but continued to air them regardless.
While the voting technology company sued Fox News over the network”s promotions of false claims that Dominion voting machines rigged the 2020 election, almost all of the allegedly defamatory statements mentioned in Dominion”s lawsuit occurred before the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, who in late March ruled that the case will go to trial, said at a hearing Tuesday that invoking January 6 would be too prejudicial with the jury, and that the case isn”t about whether Fox News “influenced” the insurrection.
“That may be for another court at another time, but it”s not for this court at this time,” Davis said, as quoted by CNN.
The judge is issuing rulings on nearly two dozen pretrial motions that will set the stage for the historic trial, which is set to kick off this week, with jury selection on Thursday.
Davis ruled in Dominion”s favor on other key questions, blocking Fox from making some First Amendment arguments and from bringing up evidence that it thought would help its defense.
The judge ruled that Fox can”t bring up broadcasts where reporters accurately fact-checked Trump”s lies about the 2020 election, to prove that other broadcasts that amplified those lies weren”t defamatory.
Those other broadcasts “are not relevant” to the case, Davis said, because “you can”t absolve yourself of defamation by putting someone else on at a different time” who told the truth about Dominion.
The judge also ruled that Fox can”t use internal Dominion emails where its staffers said their products “suck” and were “riddled with bugs,” to prove that there were real concerns about Dominion machines, and therefore Fox didn”t defame Dominion. Those emails weren”t public in 2020, so they couldn”t have influenced the state of mind of Fox staffers when they promoted the Dominion claims on their shows.
(Israel National News’ North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of the Seventh Day of Passover in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)