• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, April 10, 2023

Fox News has settled a defamation lawsuit with Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil.

Khalil's $250-million suit charged that after the 2020 election, Lou Dobbs, a Fox News host at the time, falsely accused Khalil and three other Venezuelans of participating in a “non-existent scheme to rig or fix the election” against Donald Trump.

Dobbs accused Khalil of being a "liaison with Hezbollah" who had helped lead an "electoral 9-11," and called the election a “cyber Pearl Harbor.”

The parties sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan on Saturday stating that they had reached a “confidential agreement” resolving the lawsuit and expect to file a joint stipulation of dismissal next week.

On Sunday, Fox released a statement saying the matter “has been resolved amicably by both sides,” adding that Fox would have no further comment.

Fox cancelled Dobbs’ show in February 2021, one day after the Smartmatic voting systems company filed a $2.7-billion defamation suit against Dobbs, fellow Fox anchors Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, Fox News, Fox Corp and Trump lawyers Rudi Giuliani and Sidney Powell for accusing Smartmatic of engaging in election fraud.

The separate, $1.6-billion defamation case brought by Dominion Voting — set to begin jury selection this week — has generated ample headlines due to the release of deposed statements from Fox Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch and emails among Murdoch and other Fox executives discussing their coverage of the election.

But the larger Smartmatic case has also been proceeding, despite Fox’s efforts to get it dismissed. On March 8, the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that Smartmatic’s case could proceed against Fox News, Bartiromo, Dobbs and Giuliani.

Smartmatic’s lawsuit accuses the Fox hosts and guests of broadcasting more than 100 false statements, including claiming that the company helped rig election counts in six battleground states, and shared its technology with Dominion for fraudulent purposes. Smartmatic has stated that it participated only in Los Angeles county vote counting, and did not share its technology with rival Dominion.

The lawsuit also charges Fox with falsely describing Smartmatic as having been founded in Venezuela at the behest of dictators. The company was actually founded by Antonio Mugica and Roger Piñate in 2000 in Boca Raton, to help address the state’s compromised elections system following the “hanging chads” mess that resulted in the Supreme Court deciding the election, according to press reports.  

As with the Dominion case, Smartmatic would have to prove actual malice — that Fox knew it was airing lies, or showed reckless disregard for the truth — to win.

In his March ruling, New York Supreme Court justice David Cohen stated that Fox News “at a minimum” had “turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims” about Smartmatic, and that the plaintiffs had “pleaded facts sufficient to allow a jury to infer that Fox News acted with actual malice.”

In all of the defamation actions, Fox has argued that the lawsuits are without legal merit because Fox was engaging in First Amendment-protected coverage of news. Fox also asserts that the lawsuits threaten to undermine crucial protections for journalism and freedom of the press.