While some of Fox News’ “straight news” anchors have forcefully pushed back on President Donald Trump’s voter fraud conspiracies, it appears others are willing to lend some credence to them.
Referencing Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell’s debunked theory that software from Dominion Voting Systems switched “millions of votes” from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden, Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer said on Monday afternoon that Powell’s evidence-free conspiracy-mongering “sounded convincing.”
During an interview with Trump-boosting Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Powell—who has also been pushing a conspiracy that the CIA was involved in switching votes to Biden—claimed that she had proof to back her assertions but she was “not gonna tell on national TV.”
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“We are fixing to overturn the results of the election in multiple states and President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes but by millions of votes that were shifted by the software that was designed expressly for that purpose,” Powell declared.
With the Trump campaign’s election lawsuits getting thrown out of court or withdrawn, Hemmer aired a clip of Powell’s interview before noting that Powell did not share anything to support her claims.
“So that is Sidney Powell, she is an attorney for the president, claiming they have evidence of voter fraud and she's tying it to a voting machine company called Dominion,” Hemmer said. “The company denies all fraud accusations. The Trump team has not shared their evidence with Americans. Fox News has not seen any evidence.”
Introducing Fox News legal analyst Andrew McCarthy, Hemmer then went on to suggest that, despite the lack of evidence, Powell’s theory could still be true.
“I don’t know if we’re in a different situation now than we were last Thursday when we talked. I saw that interview with Sidney Powell and Maria on Sunday, she sounded convincing,” the veteran anchor started. “So what now?”
McCarthy, for his part, said that the Trump campaign needs to put forth evidence now if it wants its voter fraud claims to be taken seriously.
“You know, at a certain point in time, Bill, it doesn’t help anymore to say, you know, a lot of things are rife with possibility for fraud,” he noted. “You know, December 8th is the day that—is the safe harbor provision in federal law where the states have to certify their electoral votes. If you want to block that from happening it’s put up or shut up time.”
McCarthy also pointed out that while Powell has yet to reveal any proof, Dominion and other parties that Team Trump has tried to implicate have all denied the campaign’s allegations.
“Now I don’t have a way of knowing or brokering that claim of whether it’s true or not true but all I know is one party that would have direct knowledge says it’s not true and the other party, which is the president’s team, keeps saying we are gathering evidence but they’re not putting anything on the table.”
Hours after Bartiromo’s interview with Powell on Sunday, Fox News weekend anchor Eric Shawn delivered an extensive fact-check of the president’s various voter fraud claims, specifically debunking the Dominion software conspiracy while noting that “such baseless and false claims are an insult to the thousands of election officials and workers across the country.”
