‘Tucker Carlson Really Hurt Himself and Fox News’: Andrew Weissmann Says Defamation Lawyers Are ‘Licking Their Chops’

Former federal prosecutor and Mueller investigation alumnus Andrew Weissmann said Tucker Carlson jeopardized himself and Fox News with his attempt to gaslight viewers about the 2021 Capitol riot.

On Monday’s show, Carlson aired snippets of footage from the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where Congress gathered to certify the 2020 presidential election. The Fox News host was given access to more than 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from that day by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Carlson showed several trespassers not engaged in violence in an attempt to draw attention away from the very real violence of that day.

“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson alleged. “Taken as a whole, the video record does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.”

Carlson also repeated the lie the 2020 election had been “unfairly conducted.”

Fox News is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.6 billion after hosts and guests on the network suggested or claimed outright the company helped rig the election. The network denies the suit has merit.

On Tuesday’s Deadline: White House on MSNBC, Weissmann reacted to Carlson’s show the previous night:

When I watched it last night, I was thinking about the in-house and outside lawyers representing Fox in the Dominion suit. And the clip you just played where they said basically, you know, “We’re not gonna comment on this because we’re in the middle of basically what could be a life and death civil suit.”

Because 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.

And so I was thinking about this decision where they say, “Well we’re not going to talk directly about that lawsuit and the voting.” But they yet 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, 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…

[…]

And Fox News is going to be facing its reckoning in a civil case. And so, all of those are locations where facts actually matter. So that if you want to spin publicly, you can do that, but it’s going to hurt you in a court of law. And I think that Tucker Carlson really hurt himself and Fox News by saying things that are really fodder for cross-examination.

Fox News issued a statement about the suit.

“Dominion has been caught red handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear FOX News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” it read.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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