Sean Hannity, the Fox News opinion host and erstwhile purveyor of Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” did not believe the disgraced former president’s 2020 election fraud claims “for one second,” details from a sworn deposition revealed Wednesday.
Hannity, who was deposed as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News, was asked under oath if he believed claims by conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, amplified on his show, that the Colorado-based company was part of a plot to rig its voting machines to switch large numbers of votes from Trump to President Joe Biden.
“I did not believe it for one second,” Hannity testified, Dominion attorney Stephen Shackelford Jr. said Wednesday in a Delaware Superior Court hearing, according toNPR.
“And yet he pushed these lies anyway,” tweeted Rantt Media co-founder Ahmed Baba. “Fox News hosts knowingly lie to their viewers and admit it. This should be a bigger scandal.”
Hannity’s admission echoed sworn testimony from other Fox News personnel, including opinion host Tucker Carlson and executive vice president Meade Cooper, who “confirmed under oath she never believed the lies about Dominion,” Shackelford said.
“Tucker Carlson, he tried to squirm out of it at his deposition,” the lawyer added before the judge cut him off.
Public policy expert Maya Contreras called the depositions the “strongest evidence yet to emerge publicly that some Fox employees knew that what they were broadcasting was false.”
