CNN has been having a field day with Rudy Giuliani’s deposition video cross-examining his claims of election tampering evidence, which included a purported trip in 2013/2014 by the heads of voting-systems companies Dominion and Smartmatic USA to Venezuela to participate in a “vote-fixing” meeting.
In the deposition, Giuliani said he was given that anecdotal — and since debunked — evidence about election fraud, a conspiracy theory that he reported during a press conference but never attempted to personally verify. The idea was to push the (conspiracy) theory that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
The press conference in question — and thus, Giuliani’s claims — was covered by several conservative news outlets, including Fox News.
Giuliani’s public and false accusation has led to numerous libel lawsuits: Dominion sued Giuliani for $1.3 billion dollars and Fox News for $1.6 billion. Smartmatic USA sued Fox News for $2.7 billion.
Fox News has filed to dismiss both lawsuits, at the time telling TheWrap: “Fox News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.”
“Before the press conference, I was told about it,” Giuliani said of the Venezuela hearsay (and we’re being generous in using that term) in the deposition. “Sometimes I go and look myself online when stuff comes up. This time I didn’t have time to do it. It’s not my job in a fast-moving case to go out and investigate every piece of evidence that is given to me.”
“From America’s Mayor to Trump’s Stooge,” Chris Cuomo said of Giuliani on his Thursday night program, which re-aired the deposition video.
Attorney and CNN contributor Jeffrey Toobin also reveled in Giuliani’s floundering.
“In order to win a libel case like this, the plaintiffs have to show what’s called ‘reckless disregard for the truth,’” Toobin said. “That deposition to me looks like the definition of reckless disregard for the truth. The idea that you will go out in public and damage the reputation — as Giuliani clearly did — of these companies, without any sort of checking, without any sort of concern for whether what you’re saying is true, seems to me, clearly libelous.”
Toobin said he believes Giuliani is now “on the hook for millions of dollars.”
“I think these libel cases will be disastrous for him, and they may as well be disastrous for the media outlets, including Fox News, that put it on uncritically,” Toobin said.
Watch the video above. Toobin’s turn comes around the 5-minute mark.