Saturday, 08 April 2023 09:36

Sex, Lies, and Voting Machines Featured

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How far would you go to save your job? Would you lie under oath in a court deposition?

Former Fox News Producer, Abby Grossberg did, but then she thought better of it, recanted her story, and sued her employer for both allegedly coercing her to lie, and for sexual harassment. Then they fired her, and claimed she was both lying, and bad at her job.

On its own, that set of facts is pretty sensational, but when considered in context with the underlying case involved; the $1.6 billion dollar defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News for promoting the "big lie" on the air after the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost because the company's machines somehow actually changed votes for Trump into votes for Joe Biden.

Quite the story, and now the basis for the lawsuit claiming that Fox destroyed Dominion's reputation to the point that they not only lost contracts they already had, but also pending deals that would allow them to continue to operate their business successfully.

But Fox is claiming that they were just reporting the news as it came to them from the former president and surrogates speaking on his behalf. And besides–and here's the rub for Grossberg–they contend that her lack of fact checking led network luminaries Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, and Sean Hannity to repeat those lies on the air. Grossberg contends they're trying to scapegoat her, and though she admits she actually did lie about it originally; she only did so because she was being pressured by Fox lawyers.

The problem is; internal communications including text messages, tell a whole different story about what was really going on inside Fox News, and the judge hearing the case recently ruled it not only has to go to trial, but that it is “CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true".

The judge made this ruling based on pretrial court documents that reportedly show the network stars and even Fox network owner, Rupert Murdoch, actually knew that the alleged Dominion voting machine story was false, but repeated it anyway, because they were afraid they'd lose viewers, ratings, and money if they told the truth. Now, all of them are going to have to go to court to testify in the Dominion case.

Of course all that is going on far away from Ohio, but it does actually have a local connection.

In 2021, the Stark County Board of Commissioners decided not to buy 14 hundred new voting machines from Dominion, which had been recommended by the Stark County Board of Elections, and they did so, based on the false allegations about the machines. Stark County, of course, is far from the only local jurisdiction that has done the same thing; hence the big lawsuit against Fox.

But even leaving the whole Fox-Dominion dispute aside; there are lawsuits every day, where employees are called on to either back up, or refute allegations of misdeeds on the part of their employers. Then, those employees, like Abby Grossberg, have a choice to make; tell the truth and maybe lose their jobs, or tell a lie and possibly get blamed for something they didn't do, or even face charges of perjury.

Rock, meet hard place.

So, that's why I decided to talk about it with Akron Attorney, and University of Akron Law Professor Emeritus, J. Dean Carro. Listen now.


Carro

J. Dean Carro, Attorney

Read 1673 times Last modified on Sunday, 09 April 2023 08:19