Jeanine Pirro. Jesse Watters. Maria Bartiromo. They seemed to have different motivations, but the same goal: Help President Trump.
Several of Fox News’s most prominent on-air news personalities made clear their desire to help Mr. Trump shortly before and after the 2020 presidential election, according to a tranche of court documents released on Tuesday in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation filed by Smartmatic, a voting technology company.
In one text message, Mr. Watters, who now hosts “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News, said to his colleague Greg Gutfeld: “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,” a reference to the movement trying to overturn the results of the election.
Ms. Pirro, a former Fox News host who is now the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., told Ronna McDaniel, then the Republican National Committee chair, in a text in the months before the election: “I work so hard for the President and party.” Ms. Pirro had been pushing for a pardon from Mr. Trump for her ex-husband, Smartmatic argues.
Ms. Bartiromo, a host on Fox Business and Fox News, texted Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump, about the election results on Nov. 12, 2020: “I want you to overturn this.” (She later testified in a deposition that she had hoped Mr. Trump would win in the election, and had wanted to see evidence of cheating from Mr. Giuliani and for the election to be overturned if that was uncovered.)
The hundreds of pages of documents — largely newly unredacted versions of previously released ones — were filed on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. Smartmatic has accused Fox News of knowingly implicating the company in false claims of vote-rigging in the 2020 election.
Both Smartmatic and Fox News have asked the judge for summary judgment, meaning to rule on the case without a trial. The judge overseeing the case, David B. Cohen, is expected to issue his decision in the coming months.
Smartmatic filed its lawsuit against Fox in February 2021, and the documents are the fullest picture yet of the evidence it says it has compiled against the network. Smartmatic is arguing that Fox, facing a growing backlash after calling Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr., pivoted to a narrative about election fraud to placate its viewers despite knowing it was not true.
Smartmatic says that it, along with another company, Dominion Voting Systems, became the focus of conspiracy theories perpetuated by Fox News hosts that the companies were somehow linked to each other and were involved in rigging votes. Smartmatic had only provided voting technology in Los Angeles County and has no relationship to Dominion, according to the company.
Dominion also sued Fox for defamation. That case was settled for $787.5 million on the day the trial was set to begin in 2023.
“The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech,” a Fox spokeswoman said in a statement.
As with the documents released in the course of the Dominion case, the internal communications revealed in Smartmatic’s case show Fox executives, including Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls the company, becoming increasingly concerned about the audience reaction to its election coverage. According to the filings, Mr. Murdoch said in an email to Suzanne Scott, the Fox News chief executive, in the days after the election: “Getting creamed by CNN! Guess our viewers don’t want to watch it.”
At the same time, Mr. Murdoch and others did not believe the voter fraud claims, according to emails and text messages included in the filings.
Ms. Pirro, who was one of the most vocal proponents of the conspiracy theories on Fox News, said in a deposition that the 2020 election was free and fair and that she believed “there’s been no showing that Smartmatic engaged in any problem.”
Fox has defended its coverage of the election as protected by the First Amendment, and argued that every other major media outlet in the United States reported on the fraud allegations that the Trump campaign were making at the time. It also argues that Smartmatic was on the brink of financial collapse and has vastly overblown its damages claim.
Fox has also highlighted separate bribery charges brought against the company. In August 2024, the Justice Department charged three current and former executives at Smartmatic with bribing an election official from the Philippines so the company could win a contract providing voting machines for the country’s 2016 elections.
Federal prosecutors said in an Aug. 1, 2025, court filing in that case that they planned to present evidence showing that Smartmatic executives overbilled Los Angeles County when providing election services in 2020 and transferred the extra cash into a slush fund to be used for bribes. A Smartmatic spokeswoman, Samira Saba, said in a statement that the filing was “filled with misrepresentations.”
“We operate ethically and abide by all laws always, both in Los Angeles County and every jurisdiction where we operate,” she added.
A New York appeals court ruled in May that Fox could obtain materials about the federal indictment as part of its defense in the Smartmatic lawsuit. Fox has also petitioned L.A. County for public records about the relationship between some government officials and Smartmatic.
“Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic’s executives getting indicted for bribery charges,” the Fox spokeswoman said, “we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.”
Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email: [email protected]
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