Tucker Carlson, Other Fox News Stars Privately Blasted Donald Trump's Election Fraud Claims They Peddled

Several Fox News stars, like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, have publicly peddled Donald Trump's narrative that the 2020 election was stolen. But privately, they ridiculed and criticized this false claim made by the former president.

This revelation surfaced in a legal filing made public late Thursday as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, CNN reported.

Court papers showed that several Fox News personalities and executives brutally mocked claims of voter fraud by Trump as well as his attorneys, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.

In a set of text messages revealed in the court filing, Carlson told Ingraham that Powell, a lawyer representing Trump in election-related lawsuits, was "lying" and he had "caught her" doing so. To which Ingraham replied, "Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy."

CNBC reported that another message sent by Carlson to his producer showed that he was worried their credibility would be destroyed for peddling false claims on air.

"We worked really hard to build what we have. Those f----ers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me," he said in a November 5, 2020 message. Previously, Fox News host Sean Hannity also said he did not believe Trump's election fraud claims "for one second."

Fox News Executive Rupert Murdoch Also Did Not Believe Donald Trump's Election Fraud Claims

The messages also revealed that Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox and executive chairman of News Corp., did not believe Donald Trump's election lies as well.

Murdoch even floated the idea of having Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham appear together in prime time and outright say that Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. Murdoch reportedly believed such an act "would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen."

However, it did not happen, and instead, Trump doubled down on his assertions that the 2020 election was rigged, and companies like Dominion and Smartmatic helped Biden steal the elections.

That led to both companies filing separate billion-dollar lawsuits against Fox News. The lawsuits alleged that Fox News defamed the two companies by repeatedly claiming, without evidence, election fraud claims involving their voting machines.

Fox News Hit Back at the Dominion Voting Systems' Claims

Fox News tried to show its journalistic integrity during the 2020 election by correctly calling the Arizona race for President Joe Biden. However, after that, the network's ratings took a huge hit.

Fox News started losing viewers to rival right-wing network Newsmax during the 2020 election coverage, as Newsmax continued to propagate Donald Trump's insinuations that the election was rigged.

This made some Fox News stars and executives express concern, with Sean Hannity reportedly texting Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham that the Fox News correctly calling on the Arizona results "destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable."

It reportedly led to some infighting within the network. According to NPR, colleagues attacked Fox News host Neil Cavuto for pulling away his show from a presentation by former White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany.

In that presentation, McEnany repeated Trump's unfounded election fraud claims. In the latest filing, the lawyers of Dominion Voting Systems said Fox never retracted the claims made about the election tech firm on its airwaves.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

WATCH: Lawrence: Fox Hosts' Texts Reveal They Didn't Believe Trump's Election Lies - From MSNBC