CNN: Is Fox News in trouble? Hear what George Conway thinks

Conservative lawyer George Conway talks with Anderson Cooper about Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News.

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Transcript

He did not consult with Mcconnell about this decision to release this footage, Anderson. >> Manu Raju, appreciate it. I want to get perspective from “Washington post” contributing columnist George Conway. What do you make of this? Does it make sense what Mccarthy is doing? >> No. It makes sense as a purely pr

Act to placify, to play indicate tucker Carlson and to play indicate the Maga base. But it doesn’t make any sense from any other standpoint. For example, the idea that the defendants need this — need this in order to defend themselves. Well, the government already has this stuff. And if there is anything in

There exculpatory, they’re required to produce it. And under Brady against Maryland. And the fact of the matter is, what is it that it could possibly show that would help these defendants? I mean, for example, if you catch one defendant smearing feces on the walls of the capitol, and he later then uses

The batter in another video and washes his hands, that doesn’t get you off of what he did in the first place. And showing that I don’t know what else they could possibly glean from it, showing that capitol police officers at some points allowed people to come in? Well, they did that in part

Because they were trying to prevent a bloodbath. So I just don’t understand what it is that they’re trying to accomplish other than to just perpetuate the January 6th lie, that there was nothing extraordinary that happened on January 6th. >> From a legal perspective, how much trouble do you think fox

News is in with this dominion lawsuit? >> It’s incredible. I litigated libel cases, one in particular in my practice 25 years ago. I litigated lots of other cases. When you a libel case and you’re the plaintiff’s lawyer, you don’t expect to get anything remotely like this.

This is sort of like a — these cases are like a kaleidoscope. What you have is sometimes you turn it one way and the reporters look a little careless and they look like they’re ignoring something. The other way, you can see how they might have believed this story to be true.

And what’s really remarkable is that this comes in the context of the most different. Standard, the most standard that you could possibly apply in a libel case, which is “The new York Times” against Sullivan standard, which governs the libel claims on matters of public concern against public figures.

And that requires — it’s a bit of a misnomer. People talk about it being the standard of actual malice. The supreme court uses that word. But malice isn’t required. You heard the term “Reckless disregard.” Reckless isn’t enough. It’s not enough the reporter blew past some facts.

What you have to show, in a case from 1968 called St. Amon versus Thompson that says what you have to show to show reckless disregard is at a minimum, the publisher of the information or the broadcaster of the information actually entertained serious doubts as to the truth of what was being reported.

And here it’s you have that in droves, at multiple levels. I don’t have you the fact checker, you have the anchors, you have Rupert Murdoch, all agreeing that this was false. And you never see in a libel case, you just virtually never see in a libel case the libel plaintiff moving for summary

Judgment, which is a judgment without a trial, saying there is really no issue to go to the jury. It’s all one-sided. Because the standard against libel plaintiffs is so high. And here they made that motion. And it’s not a bad motion. I think ultimately it will be

Heard before a jury, but if the judge actually granted certainly on falsity, but they’re not disputing falsity, if the judge even granted on actual malice and the state of mind, “The new York Times” standard, that wouldn’t be crazy, and that’s remarkable. >> Do you think it affects — if

The ruling, if it does go to trial, and there is a big fine for fox, does that impact, do you think kind of right wing media how it behaves going to the 2024 election, or even the former president? Fox is in this weird position now of how — if the former

President guess on their air and repeats lies about dominion voting machines and the last election, what did they do? >> Well, it’s hard to say, because the law isn’t any different after a judgment is entered against fox than it was before. You’re not supposed to lie. You can’t tell lies.

You’re going to be held liable for lies. And yet foxes that been taking this crazy view. And you saw it in the excerpts of Rupert Murdoch’s deposition. You see it in some of the statements that their pr flakes have been producing which is oh, well, fox didn’t endorse the big lie.

Maybe some of our anchors did. It doesn’t work that way. You know, that Anderson. If you say something and you report something and you describe it as fact or even as something short of established fact, CNN is on the hook if you libel somebody. And your state of mind matters. >> Yeah.

>> It’s crazy what — they’re taking a position like these people, we pay them.

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