Sean Hannity was apparently willing to promote Donald Trump’s bogus election fraud claims on his Fox News show but unwilling to defend them while under oath.
The New York Times is reporting that when Hannity was deposed earlier this year as a part of a massive defamation lawsuit brought forward by Dominion Voting Systems against the right-wing network, he basically admitted his real thoughts about the 2020 election being stolen.
“I did not believe it for one second,” Hannity testified.
However, that didn’t stop Hannity from hosting fraud proponents like Sidney Powell, who offered wild allegations about Dominion such as the machines supposedly running an algorithm that switched votes for Trump to Joe Biden.
Hannity’s confession came out in court during a hearing on Wednesday to address several issues that need to be resolved before the case heads for a jury trial scheduled to begin in April.
But Hannity’s Dominion disclosure does suggest that at least some Fox employees were aware they were broadcasting fake news.
The Times notes that the high legal standard of proof in defamation cases requires Dominion to persuade a jury that network employees were saying one thing in public and another in private.
In fact, Dominion lawyers argued in a Delaware courtroom on Wednesday that “not a single Fox witness” had produced anything that supported any of the bogus election fraud claims Trump and his supporters promoted after the 2020 presidential election.
Dominion lawyer Stephen Shackelford told the court that Hannity’s doubts were echoed in depositions with other Fox hosts and executives, including Tucker Carlson, who he said: “tried to squirm out of it at his deposition” when asked about what he really believed.
HuffPost reached out to Fox News for comment, but no one immediately responded.
Fox News isn’t the only place that was skeptical about the false stolen election claims: A memo uncovered last year shows that the Trump campaign knew soon after Election Day that many of his claims were baseless.