On Air vs. Under Oath
What they say on camera and what court filings reveal they said privately. Every quote below comes from public court records — depositions, discovery exhibits, and settlement filings. The gap between performance and belief is the product you're watching.
The Cases
Lawsuits and proceedings that pried open internal communications. Click any case to jump to its contradictions.
Trump v. American Broadcasting Companies (Stephanopoulos)
Trump sued ABC News after George Stephanopoulos repeatedly stated on air that Trump was found liable for 'rape' in the E. Jean Carroll civil case. The jury had actually found Trump liable for 'sexual …
Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network
Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for defamation after the network repeatedly aired false claims that Dominion's voting machines were used to rig the 2020 presidential election. Court-filed discov…
Smartmatic USA v. Fox Corporation
Smartmatic sued Fox Corporation for $2.7 billion over false claims that its election technology was used to rig the 2020 election. The case produced additional internal documents beyond the Dominion c…
Dominion Voting Systems v. Newsmax Media
Dominion sued Newsmax for airing similar false claims about its voting machines. Trial evidence showed Newsmax hosts and executives were aware the claims lacked evidence but continued coverage to comp…
NBC News / Weinstein Story Suppression
Ronan Farrow investigated Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuse for NBC News, obtaining on-camera victim testimony and audio evidence. NBC News president Noah Oppenheim and chairman Andy Lack killed the sto…
Trump v. American Broadcasting Companies (Stephanopoulos)
Demonstrated that factual mischaracterization of court findings by anchors — even when the underlying case involved serious misconduct — creates legal liability when the distinction matters.
“Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape.”
“ABC News acknowledged in settlement that the jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, not rape. Stephanopoulos repeated the mischaracterization at least ten times on air despite the legal distinction.”
Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network
The largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history. Court filings made public an extraordinary trove of internal Fox News communications proving hosts and executives knew the election fraud narrative was false while continuing to broadcast it.
“Fox News' coverage of the election fraud claims was driven by our commitment to reporting on newsworthy allegations.”
“We called Arizona early, and it was right, and the Trump people went crazy. The stock price went down. That put tremendous pressure on the hosts to push back on the results.”
“We hear enough from people about irregularities, enough that it warrants investigation. These are legitimate concerns about vote-counting systems.”
“Sidney Powell is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
“There are questions that need to be asked about voting irregularities. The American people have every right to ask these questions.”
“Please get her fired. Seriously... What is wrong with these people? I'm actually disgusted by them.”
“Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software. I want to bring that up — 30 states use this software. What can you tell us?”
“Her communications with a conspiracy theorist who emailed her wild, unsubstantiated claims which she then broadcast without verification were exposed in court filings.”
“We are now hearing from people who have witnessed irregularities, fraud, things that should never happen. Exposed Dominion — a system that is widely used.”
“Crazy f'ing lunatics. I feel like we are on the Titanic.”
“We have the evidence, we have the witnesses, we have the whistleblowers. This was a corrupt election.”
“I did not believe it for one second.”
“Two software companies count the votes in 30 states. We have no idea if they are honest. We ought to find out.”
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It's insane.”
“The outcome of our presidential election was seized from the hands of voters, where combative reformers combated unfounded narratives.”
“It's unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”
“We took Sidney Powell seriously. We had no intention of tweaking her. We've always respected her work.”
“I hate him passionately... What he's good at is destroying things. He's the undisputed world champion of that.”
Sources & Methodology
Every quote on this page comes from publicly available court records: depositions, discovery exhibits, and settlement filings. We do not editorialize about what these contradictions mean — the words speak for themselves. Where a quote comes from a deposition, the speaker was under oath. Where it comes from a text message or email, it was produced through court-ordered discovery and authenticated as genuine by both parties.
Cases included: Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News ($787.5M settlement, 2023), Smartmatic v. Fox Corporation (~$2B settlement, 2025), Dominion v. Newsmax (~$40M settlement, 2025), Trump v. ABC News / Stephanopoulos ($15M settlement, 2024).