After years of baseless Republican bellyaching that Big Tech content-moderation policies qualify as illegal in-kind campaign contributions to Democrats, a court filing last week appeared to flip the script in a very real way.
And then on Tuesday, the script may have flipped again.
Last week’s filing—submitted as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ billion-dollar defamation lawsuit against Fox News—accused network patriarch Rupert Murdoch of giving Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign a sneak peak at an unreleased Joe Biden ad.
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“During Trump’s campaign, Rupert provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy,” the document read.
That allegation drew widespread media coverage and criticism of the network. It also prompted two groups to file civil complaints with the Federal Election Commission, claiming the sneak peek would have constituted an illegal in-kind corporate contribution from Fox to the Trump campaign.
But on Tuesday, Delaware superior court judge Eric M. Davis unsealed the exhibits underlying Dominion’s claim, including Murdoch’s deposition from January. Now, the waters appear muddier, and the complaints may stand on shakier legal ground.
Fox didn’t provide comment for the news reports last week, including those regarding the FEC complaints. But on Tuesday, the company fired back.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, a Fox spokesperson acknowledged that Murdoch had indeed shared a Biden ad with top Trump adviser Jared Kushner—a fact that wasn’t quite clear in the exhibits. The spokesperson said, however, that video had already been released publicly.
“Mr. Murdoch forwarded an already-publicly available Biden campaign ad which was available on YouTube and had even run on public airwaves,” the statement said. The statement added that Dominion had been “caught red handed” inserting “distortions and misinformation” into its lawsuit. The spokesperson characterized the lawsuit as a “smear” against the network, designed to “trample on free speech and freedom of the press.”
The Daily Beast has not been able to confirm which Biden ad Fox was referencing in its statement. The network did not clarify when presented with an array of options. The communication that the Fox statement described—in which Murdoch actually shares the link with Kushner—does not appear to have been included in the newly unsealed exhibits.
It’s not clear why Fox waited to reveal this information.
Last week, two progressive groups, End Citizens United and Media Matters for America, targeted the Murdoch-Kushner exchange in complaints. Both filings say that the confidential information, as described in Dominion’s filing last week, would appear to meet the legal definition of a contribution—the “gift of money, or any services, or anything of value” from “any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.” They ask the FEC to hand down the “maximum” penalty for Fox and the Trump campaign.
A Dominion spokesperson did not refute Fox’s new claims, but provided a statement saying that “the emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves.”
“We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all leads to the same place—Fox knowingly spread lies causing enormous damage to an American company,” the statement said.
The new information from Fox would appear to undercut the more sweeping claims in those FEC complaints.
“Respondent’s actions are not only an egregious violation of the Act and the Commission’s regulations, but also a nefarious attempt by people in power to operate a press entity as a political organization, in blatant disregard of the rules that govern our elections and democracy,” MMFA wrote in its filing.
Asked about Fox’s comment, MMFA President Angelo Carusone told The Daily Beast the network can “save it for the FEC.”
“It’s Rupert Murdoch’s own words and acknowledgement,” Carusone said. “I would add that it’s a little weird that this is what Fox News’ PR shop is choosing to focus on tonight given the tome documenting Fox misdeeds that have been exposed.”
A spokesperson for End Citizens United did not respond with comment.
Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director at campaign finance watchdog Documented, observed that while campaigns would likely view an ad preview as a “massive oppo find,” that value evaporates if the video is already public.
“Murdoch himself admits that he was trying to help the Trump campaign. But if all Murdoch did was share a publicly available Biden ad, then he’s not providing much of value,” Fischer said, cautioning that there are still a lot of unknowns.
Regardless of the value, Fischer said, Murdoch’s deposition makes it clear that he was willing to use corporate resources, and intelligence he gathered as the head of Fox in order to help the Trump campaign. And that deposition—which evinces the conservative media kingpin’s close relationship with Trump’s son-in-law during the 2020 campaign—is not as clear as his network’s statement.
In the interview, Murdoch admitted to Dominion’s defense team that he was “trying to help Mr. Kushner” by sharing what he acknowledged was an unreleased Biden ad.
Asked whether he would give Kushner previews of ads that Biden was going to air on Fox, Murdoch replied, “No.” But when a Dominion attorney presented an email chain where Murdoch and Kushner had discussed the comparative quality of the two campaigns’ ads, the billionaire kingpin seemed to change his answer.
In one of the messages, dated Sept. 25, 2020, and included as an exhibit, Murdoch told Kushner that an upcoming Trump ad was “an improvement,” noting that the Biden campaign would be running an ad “in the same football” game—seemingly in reference to campaign ads that would run during a Sunday NFL broadcast two days later.
Murdoch signed off by writing, “Will send it.”
Dominion’s counsel then asked Murdoch whether that was “appropriate” for someone in his position. In response, Murdoch—who had pointed out that he’d sent the email from his official address at Fox Broadcasting Network—explained that he was “trying to help Mr. Kushner.”
“He’s a friend of mine,” Murdoch said.
The attorney asked, “You were trying to help the Trump campaign by giving him a preview of the Biden campaign’s ads before it was public?”
“Right,” Murdoch answered. “I guess so.”
Legal experts told The Daily Beast that if Kushner did in fact receive a preview, it would almost certainly qualify as an impermissible in-kind corporate contribution from Fox News to the Trump campaign.
The problem, they said, is determining the scale. The FEC schedules penalties in relation to the monetary value of the contributions. When it comes to intangibles, a precise value can be tough to determine.
Dominion’s other allegation—that Murdoch counseled Kushner on “debate strategy”—also appears thinner in light of the underlying exhibits.
In his deposition, Murdoch admitted advising Kushner that “Trump must not look like a bully” in the next debate. But he denied that he had offered Kushner anything specific or particularly poignant. “I only remember myself being horrified at Mr. Trump’s behavior in the first debate,” Murdoch said.
Murdoch added that his remark “was advice from a friend to a friend,” not “from Fox Corporation or in my capacity at Fox.”
That advice came on the heels of Trump’s performance during the first debate, which was moderated by then-Fox News anchor Chris Wallace. When Dominion’s defense team pointed out that certain segments of Fox’s audience had been upset with Wallace—who left the network in 2021—Murdoch defended the longtime newsman as having “a reputation of being pretty fair.”
“It is why he’s chosen. We were happy with that,” Murdoch said.
Murdoch’s communications with Kushner didn’t end there. He also admitted passing along a tip in mid-October that “more stuff on Biden was coming, hopefully before the debate.” Murdoch told the defense that he didn’t want to “speculate” about what he was talking about at the time, “Unless I was talking about the New York Post and Hunter Biden,” he said.
That’s a reference to the controversial report published that month in Murdoch’s tabloid, which revealed salacious information found on a hard drive later confirmed to belong to Joe Biden’s son. The laptop story was first pitched to Fox News, but the network declined amid sourcing concerns; a former aide to Fox star commentator Sean Hannity appears on the Post byline.
Dominion’s lawsuit, which alleges that top brass at Fox News knowingly furthered harmful lies about its voting systems, appears headed for a jury trial this spring. Fox has argued that Dominion—which has also leveled massive lawsuits at Newsmax and One America News Network—is laying siege to the freedom of the press. The First Amendment, the network says, extends to false claims of election fraud that some of its top personalities and on-air guests pushed in the wake of Trump’s defeat.
That stolen election narrative snowballed in the months after the election, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which resulted in multiple deaths and the arrest and conviction of hundreds of Trump supporters—many of whom were doubtlessly ardent Fox News viewers. During the insurrection, the network downplayed the violence, even as some of its biggest stars sent panicked text messages to the White House, calling on Trump to put an end to the riot.
Prior court filings in the Dominion case have shown that, weeks before the riot, as the network entertained baseless allegations of election fraud to appeal to the MAGA base, top hosts and executives were privately expressing doubt and even contempt for some of those claims.
In filings last month, Dominion revealed that Murdoch admitted that some of his hosts had endorsed Trump’s claims of fraud at the time. The boss, however, had not. In an email sent to former New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan and unsealed on Tuesday, Murdoch called Trump’s claims after the election “bullshit and damaging.”
“Big media, big money and big tech all against him,” Murdoch wrote in the email, adding, “But conspiracy with pollsters NO!”
“Giving big money not a conspiracy!” he wrote. “Mainly a waste.”
