Fox News star Sean Hannity, who is one of former President Donald Trump’s strongest allies on the air and one of his closest advisers off it recently admitted under oath that he never believed the lie that Trump was cheated of victory in the 2020 presidential election by a voting tech company.
Sean Hannity talks about Donald Trump losing the election
On television, Fox News hosts, stars and guests amplified and embraced such wild and false claims, made by Trump, his campaign lawyers and surrogates, presenting them to millions of viewers.
Hannity and a top Fox News executive who oversees prime-time programs told a different story about Trump’s false claims of fraud under oath and in front of attorneys, during separate depositions in a $1.6 billion defamation suit. While the depositions happened in August, their statements emerged yesterday in a Delaware Superior Court hearing relating to a series of motions by the two sides in the case.
“I did not believe it for one second,” Hannity testified, according to an attorney for Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, who was offering it as a precise quote.
Meade Cooper, Fox News’ executive vice president, “confirmed under oath she never believed the lies about Dominion,” the Dominion attorney, Stephen Shackelford, Jr., also said.
“Tucker Carlson, he tried to squirm out of it at his deposition,” Shackelford added, and then alluded to the Fox News star’s texts from November and December 2020, when Judge Eric Davis cut Shackelford off.
Those sworn interviews took place during what’s called the discovery phase of the case, in preparation for trial, which is scheduled for April.
