Newsom Needles Fox News With a $787 Million Defamation Suit — Nearly the Same Amount It Was Forced To Pay Dominion

Governor Newsom of California has taken a page out of Dominion Voting’s playbook, filing a $787 million defamation suit against Fox News in which he alleges the network falsely claimed he never spoke directly with President Trump in early June.“No more lies,” Mr. Newsom said in a post on X announcing that he had filed the defamation suit. He claims that the news channel accused him of saying that he never received a call from Mr. Trump when the governor was referring to claims made by the president about their conversation taking place on June 9 and not the call that actually took place two days earlier.The Democratic leader of the Golden State, who has taken on a more combative approach with the president and other Republican officials, has accused the conservative news network of reporting that Mr. Newsom was lying about never having a phone call with Mr. Trump in comments the governor posted on social media.At a White House news conference on June 10, a reporter asked Mr. Trump when he last spoke with Mr. Newsom.“A day ago,” the president said. “Called him to tell him, got to do a better job.”Mr. Newsom took to social media to say that he never received a call on June 9, which would have been after Mr. Trump activated the National Guard during the deportation protests at Los Angeles.“There was no call. Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to,” the governor said.Mr. Newsom’s suit alleges that Fox News employed deceptive editing to hide that Mr. Trump had said “a day ago” to frame the governor as being dishonest when he was responding to Mr. Trump’s claims that they spoke to each other on June 9. “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?” a Fox News host, Jesse Watters, said on his show while the chyron on the screen flashed “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call,” according to the lawsuit.The two men had actually spoken on June 7. That phone call is not in dispute. Mr. Trump activated the National Guard less than 24 hours after that call.It was during an interview on MSNBC on June 8 that Mr. Newsom first mentioned the call, which took place at 1 a.m. EDT the day before.The governor is seeking $787 million in damages with his suit, which was filed at the Superior Court of Delaware, the state in which Fox is incorporated. The amount is nearly identical to the $787.5 million awarded to Dominion Voting in 2023 in a settlement with the network.“If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences — just like it did in the Dominion case,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement to Politico.“Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”The governor alleges that the network was motivated to “lie and distort on behalf of the President” while the two political leaders were engaged in a public tit-for-tat over the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to the city of Los Angeles after protests broke out over the Trump administration’s immigration policies.In response to Mr. Newsom’s original post on X that he had not received a phone call on June 9, Mr. Trump had provided cellphone records to Fox News showing that he had spoken with Mr. Newsom, but the date on the call log showed June 7.In a letter to Fox News officials, lawyers for Mr. Newsom stated that he was willing to drop the lawsuit “if Fox News retracts the claim that he lied when speaking about President Trump not calling him on June 9” and if Mr. Watters makes a “formal on-air apology,” according to a report from CNBC.

Newsom Needles Fox News With a $787 Million Defamation Suit — Nearly the Same Amount It Was Forced To Pay Dominion

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