The Kraken has been released.
On Wednesday night, MSNBC aired explosive audio recordings of former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump campaign officials telling Fox News after the 2020 election that there was no evidence Dominion voting machines flipped votes for President Joe Biden.
The existence of the tapes, recorded by former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, was first revealed in an amended legal complaint by Grossberg earlier this week. Grossberg is suing Fox News for harassment and discrimination, accusing the network’s lawyers of coercing her to falsely testify in the Dominion defamation case.
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In her Tuesday filing, Grossberg claimed that Fox News failed to disclose evidence to Dominion of multiple recordings she made of Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and “high-ranking” Trump campaign officials admitting they had no proof to back their election fraud claims. She recorded the conversations in November and December 2020 during her time as the senior booking producer of Fox host Maria Bartiromo, who helped promote Team Trump’s voting machine conspiracies.
During a pre-trial hearing on Wednesday, the judge in the Dominion case reprimanded Fox News for withholding key evidence in discovery after Dominion lawyers aired some of the recordings in court. Besides sanctioning the network, the judge said he was likely to appoint a “special master” to investigate the matter and whether Fox made “untrue or negligent” claims about Rupert Murdoch’s role at the network.
During Wednesday night’s broadcast of MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight, host Alex Wagner revealed that her program had obtained copies of Grossberg’s recordings from the ex-Fox producer’s legal team.
In the first tape aired by Wagner, Giuliani was fairly upfront that he had no actual proof that there was anything wrong with Dominion’s voting machines or software. Preparing for an interview with Bartiromo just days after the presidential election, the ex-New York City mayor said off-air that he could tell the pro-Trump anchor “exactly” what the Trump team had in terms of evidence.
Asked about the “Dominion software,” however, Giuliani stated that was a “little harder” before asserting that there were some races in Michigan “being analyzed right now” over claims they had double-counted votes. “Now, whether that applies for the whole state or not, I can’t tell you yet,” he added.
Bartiromo then wondered about a conspiracy theory that Nancy Pelosi had any ownership interest in the voting software firm, prompting Giuliani to reply: “I’ve read that. I can’t prove that.”
In another conversation between a Fox News producer, Bartiromo and Trump campaign officials weeks later, an official asked to go off the record before admitting that there didn’t appear to be anything awry with voting software in Georgia.
“I think they have looked at the machines. When the secretary of state did its audit, there was a lot, I think a fair bit of looking at the machines,” the campaign official said. “The audit came in pretty darn close to what the machine count was with the receipts. So, I don’t know the outcome of those, but our understanding—again, this is from the secretary of state’s office—was that there weren’t any physical issues with machines on those inspections.”
Later in that same conversation, which took place on Dec. 5, 2020, the Trump adviser also raised the date of January 6 as the “backstop” for potentially overturning the election. This was also two weeks before former President Donald Trump first publicly urged his supporters to protest in Washington, saying “it will be wild.”
“We have seen so much reporting, whether it be December 8 or December 14, and we’ve seen virtually zero pickup of the January 6 date,” the official said, adding that people with “normal lives” probably weren’t aware of the importance of that date in certifying presidential elections.
“That’s the whole reason why I wanted to chat with you two just to understand where the real backstops are here,” he continued. “And if both sets of electors are set up, that would be the moment when the vice president—who’s the president of the Senate—would have to decide which slate of electors to go with.”
The back-and-forth between Bartiromo and the Trump adviser on the relevance of January 6 weeks ahead of the Capitol riots will probably not be admitted into the Dominion case. The judge ruled on Tuesday that lawyers for the voting software company may not mention the Jan. 6 attacks during the trial.
In its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox News of knowingly peddling election fraud lies about the company in an effort to boost sagging ratings after MAGA viewers bolted following the network’s early Arizona call for Biden, a charge the conservative cable giant vehemently denies.
Additionally, Fox has pushed back on allegations that it withheld evidence from Dominion or mischaracterized Murdoch’s current relationship with the network.
“As counsel explained to the Court, FOX produced the supplemental information from Ms. Grossberg when we first learned it,” a network spokesperson said, adding in a separate statement: “Rupert Murdoch has been listed as executive chairman of FOX News in our SEC filings for several years and this filing was referenced by Dominion’s own attorney during his deposition.”
