By Annie Grayer | CNN
Former President Donald Trump tried to call into Fox News after his supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, but the network refused to put him on air, according to court filings from Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against the company.
The House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack did not know that Trump had made this call, according to a source familiar with the panel’s work.
The panel sought to piece together a near minute-by-minute account of Trump’s movements, actions and phone calls on that day. His newly revealed call to Fox News shows some of the gaps in the record that still exist, due to roadblocks the committee faced.
“The afternoon of January 6, after the Capitol came under attack, then-President Trump dialed into Lou Dobbs’ show attempting to get on air,” Dominion lawyers wrote in their legal brief.
“But Fox executives vetoed that decision,” Dominion’s filing continued. “Why? Not because of a lack of newsworthiness. January 6 was an important event by any measure. President Trump not only was the sitting President, he was the key figure that day.”
The network rebuffed Trump because “it would be irresponsible to put him on the air” and “could impact a lot of people in a negative way,” according to Fox Business Network President Lauren Petterson, whose testimony was cited by Dominion in the new filing.
Dobbs’ show on Fox Business — in which he routinely promoted baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election — was canceled a few weeks after the January 6 insurrection.
Fox News and its parent company have denied all wrongdoing and are aggressively fighting Dominion’s defamation lawsuit. In a previous statement, a Fox spokesperson claimed that Dominion “mischaracterized the record” in its court filing and “cherry-picked quotes” that were “stripped of key context.”
The most prominent stars and highest-ranking executives at Fox News…
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