Former Federal Prosecutor Says Rupert Murdoch Uttered ‘The Worst Possible Sentence’ in His Deposition

Former federal prosecutor and Mueller investigation veteran Andrew Weissmann said Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch really stepped in it during his deposition in a major lawsuit against his company.

Dominion Voting Systems is seeking $1.6 billion in damages from the company after Fox News hosts amplified bogus claims about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Some of those claims involved wild allegations about Dominion voting machines being rigged against then-President Donald Trump.

Murdoch’s testimony in the case was unsealed on Monday in a filing by Dominion. At one point he was asked why the network kept inviting MyPillowCEO Mike Lindell as a guest. Lindell floated some of the wildest conspiracy theories, over which Dominion is also suing him.

Murdoch replied platforming Lindell was a business decision.

“It is not red or blue, it is green,” Murdoch stated, citing Lindell’s many ads on Fox News. “The man is on every night. Pays us a lot of money.”

On Thursday’s installment of The Beat, host Ari Melber asked Weissmann about Murdoch’s response. He replied it was “the worst possible sentence.”

“[Y]ou have him saying it’s not blue and it’s not red, it’s green,” Weissmann stated. “That is one of the things that Murdoch testified to. That is just the worst possible sentence for a jury to hear because they’re going to be hearing not just about, sort of regular compensatory damages, but they will – if there is a trial – they will be able to decide punitive damages and that kind of line is the kind of line that I think would make a jury quite upset.”

Melber pointed to Murdoch’s attempt to differentiate between Fox News anchors and Fox News as a network.

“He seems to think that he can push others out front and then he can back away and say, ‘It was just business,’” the MSNBC host said. “You see limits to that, how?”

“So, I think that might be a perfectly good strategy for the public, but I don’t see that working in any way in a court of law, which you alluded to,” he answered. “The way the law works, it doesn’t matter if it turns out that it’s just incredibly powerful anchors who are doing this with malice, or if it’s the CEO who’s doing this with malice. All of that gets imputed to the company.”

Fox News denies wrongdoing.

“Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context,” the network said in a statement.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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