WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — Jury selection is set to begin Thursday in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News Corp., as a Delaware court seeks 12 residents to decide whether Fox News knowingly aired false claims about vote rigging in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The lawsuit focuses on claims that Dominion’s ballot counting machines somehow used to flip the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of President Joe Biden and against former President Donald Trump. Dominion alleges that Fox News knowingly aired those claims.
In court filings, Fox has argued that Dominion’s damages request is “untethered from reality” and designed to enrich the company’s investors. They’ve also argued that voter fraud was newsworthy and that the network is protected by the first amendment. They’ve also argued
That leads to the primary question jurors will have to decide: Did Fox knowingly spread false information or recklessly disregard the truth, the standard of “actual malice” Dominion must show to prevail.
The jury pool will be drawn from New Castle County, Delaware, where Democrats outnumber members of Trump’s Republican party more than two-to-one, according to the state’s Department of Elections.
Biden represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 until 2009. Fox News and its conservative commentators were generally supportive of Trump during his presidency.
In Delaware, attorneys aren’t allowed to speak directly with potential jurors. Instead, Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, who is presiding over the case, will question them behind closed doors, using questions both sides have agreed to, including whether potential jurors have ever “worked in a newsroom” and whether “they regularly watch any Fox News programs.”
If a prospective juror responds “yes,” Davis may ask follow-up questions.
After the judge identifies 36 potential jurors, they will be brought to the courtroom and each side’s attorneys will have six “peremptory strikes,” in which they can dismiss a potential juror without giving a reason for doing so.
The streamlined process allows for jury selection to happen more quickly than it does in some other states: Davis has allotted two days.
Dominion’s lawsuit describes panic inside Fox News about alienating viewers by not lining up with Trump’s false claims he won the 2020 election, as well as some doubts about the election machine claims.
“Dominion became the connective thread in a prefabricated election fraud story that needed a villain. Fox, the highest-rated cable news channel in America, chose to legitimize, endorse, and broadcast these false claims into millions of American homes,” the company said in a statement.
In response, Fox told NewsNation that “Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked the quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”
Opening arguments are scheduled to begin Monday.
Reuters contributed to this story.