Dominion Voting Systems and the company’s lawyers have high thresholds to meet in their defamation case against Fox News, but in terms of the political impact of their lawsuit, the revelations have already been devastating — and they somehow keep getting worse.

To briefly recap, a recent court filing presented evidence that suggested Fox News promoted bogus election claims they knew to be false, on purpose, in order to placate its audience and make money. We also learned, among other things, that News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged under oath that some prominent Fox News hosts “endorsed” baseless claims the network knew to be wrong.

As part of a pretrial hearing, Dominion prepared a series of slides that referenced internal communications and testimony. Fox News redacted some pertinent details, but as NBC News reported, the judge in the case yesterday ordered that they be made public. That didn’t do the network any favors.

Ten days after the 2020 election, Fox News’ so-called Brain Room looked into conspiracy theories that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the presidential election against Donald Trump. The fact-checking and research division of the network came back with a clear decision: Those claims were false. But the misinformation went on the air anyway.

During one deposition, a Dominion lawyer asked David Clark, Fox News’ senior vice president for weekend news and programming, “If the Brain Room had concluded that the charges were, in fact, false, they never should have been aired, correct?” The network executive replied, “Yes.”

But the claims were aired anyway.

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What’s more, this wasn’t the only revelation of note from NBC News’ reporting.

• On Dec. 2, 2020, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott sent an email to Meade Cooper, the executive vice president of prime-time programming, complaining about a segment in which an on-air anchor told viewers the truth about some of Trump’s bogus voter fraud claims. “This has to stop now,” Scott wrote. “The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
• On Jan. 20, 2021, News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch emailed Scott, marveling at Trump’s election-related lies. “Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25% of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up Jan 6th,” he wrote.
• Before putting Sidney Powell on the air for a bonkers interview, Maria Bartiromo sent unhinged messages to a producer, saying, among other things, “We have to go to a full on war.” The far-right host added, “We have to keep this president. Noone [sic] thinks anyway that people voted for Biden,” before pointing to non-existent evidence of Dominion wrongdoing. Bartiromo’s weird conspiracy theory also referenced then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and George Soros for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

The case has already taken a noticeable toll on Fox’ public standing, and Democratic officials increasingly see the disclosures as a unique scandal, causing the party to rethink its entire approach to the network.

Fox News, meanwhile, has denied all wrongdoing and is vigorously contesting the lawsuit. In a statement to NBC News, a network spokesperson said, “These documents once again demonstrate Dominion’s continued reliance on cherry-picked quotes without context to generate headlines in order to distract from the facts of this case. The foundational right to a free press is at stake and we will continue to fiercely advocate for the First Amendment in protecting the role of news organizations to cover the news.”