During a new interview on MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann, who is a former federal prosecutor who worked while still on the job on the Russia investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, touted what he saw as the possibility of Tucker Carlson’s recent lies figuring in future court action.
Weissmann was discussing the possibility in the context of defamation litigation against Fox that was filed by Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company that for some reason became a subject of conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and imaginary fraud supposedly responsible for Biden’s well-documented win. Amid recent commentary trying to downplay the significance of the attack on the Capitol by Trump’s rampaging supporters, Carlson restated some of the same deception about the 2020 presidential race that led, through Fox’s role in promoting it, to Dominion’s litigation. Carlson classed the handling of the election with what he explicitly called criminal activity, which, besides dangerously furthering potential incitement for the violent radicals who stormed the Capitol, could also be taken as further maligning Dominion.
The company’s staff members have already faced widespread threats to their safety from evident believers in the conspiracy theories. “When I watched it last night, I was thinking about the in-house and outside lawyers representing Fox in the Dominion suit,” Weissmann told host Nicolle Wallace. “The amount of money here, it’s not just $1.6 billion. There’s also a potential for punitive damages and the evidence that we’ve seen so far suggests that is a lively possibility… They… have Tucker Carlson, who may very well be a witness in that trial, say things that are just as misleading and phony. And you know, if I was sitting there, if I were Dominion’s lawyers, I was thinking they must’ve been licking their chops at what was being said.”
Weissmann also called Carlson’s comments “really fodder for cross-examination.” Tucker already sat for a deposition, but this stuff could come up at the trial that may be starting soon, assuming there’s no sudden settlement.
Dominion weren’t the only ones potentially defamed by Carlson’s deception. He also once again brought up even the idea that some in the crowd helping drive the Capitol attack may have been federal agents or informants of some kind. Although he made a show of not airing the faces of individuals whose actions he was using to drive that notion for which there remains a lack of evidence, he nonetheless helped provide cover for others out there to keep spreading conspiracy theories of the sort, like about Ray Epps, a Trump supporter who in one instance singled out by conspiracy theorists was apparently trying to actually encourage a fellow member of the crowd against violence.
