By Isabella Simonetti

Prominent Fox hosts privately sought to help President Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to newly unredacted documents in a lawsuit against Fox.

Smartmatic sued Fox News and its parent Fox Corp. in 2021 for defamation, alleging the network promoted false claims that its voting machines helped rig the election. The documents show at least two Fox hosts were in touch with Sidney Powell, a lawyer at the center of Trump's postelection efforts, and one urged her to come on air.

"Sidney we must keep you out there," Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo messaged Powell on Nov. 17, 2020, according to newly unredacted filings in the lawsuit.

"I am very worried. Please please please overturn this. Bring the evidence. I know you can," she wrote to the lawyer, who played a prominent role in the effort to reverse Trump's loss to Biden.

Lou Dobbs, then a Fox Business host, also texted Powell, according to Nov. 7, 2020, messages quoted in the hundreds of pages of filings made public this week. "It's up to us -- we few!" Dobbs texted, according to the filings.

"Meanwhile I'm going to do what I can -- to help stop what is now a coup d'etat in final days --perhaps moments," of Trump's first term, Dobbs texted Powell. Dobbs later testified that the message referred to Trump being forced out of the White House, Smartmatic said in its filing. Fox Business canceled Dobbs's show in 2021. He died in 2024.

Documents in the Smartmatic case rely on much of the same evidence as a similar lawsuit brought by a separate voting-machine company, Dominion Voting Systems, that Fox settled in 2023 for $787.5 million.

Fox has said that Smartmatic was already failing by the time of the 2020 election, has been mired in scandals, and can't prove that any Fox reports caused the company to lose business or suffer other financial harm. Last year, the Justice Department indicted Smartmatic's co-founder and other leaders on money laundering and bribery charges. The company denies the allegations.

"The evidence shows that Smartmatic's business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump's lawyers on FOX News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech," a Fox spokeswoman said in a statement. "Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic's executives getting indicted for bribery charges, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms."

Fox and Smartmatic have filed competing motions asking the judge to rule in their favor without going to trial.

As in the Dominion case, the newly unredacted filings show a network aware that it lost viewers after it called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden. Smartmatic says the documents are proof that Fox was eager to boost ratings with coverage of the idea that the election had been rigged.

Fox News parent Fox Corp. and The Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.

Jeanine Pirro, one of the Fox hosts referenced in the documents, now serves as the top federal prosecutor in Washington.

"I work so hard for the President and party," Pirro, who was a Fox News host at the time, texted then-RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in September 2020.

The documents show Fox News programming executives expressing concerns after the election about the potential for Pirro's guests to say the result was stolen. Her show wasn't broadcast Nov. 7, according to the filing.

A few days later, Pirro vented to fellow host Sean Hannity:

"I'M TIRED OF THE CENSORSHIP AND I'M EMBARRASSED BY HOW THEY CALLED THIS ELECTION..." she wrote, according to the filings.

Election-fraud claims related to the 2020 presidential election prompted a number of high-profile defamation cases against conservative news networks. Earlier this month, Newsmax agreed to pay $67 million to settle a similar lawsuit brought by Dominion. Newsmax also agreed to settle a lawsuit last year over false claims that Smartmatic helped rig the 2020 election. It said it would pay $40 million in that settlement.

Dominion has ongoing defamation lawsuits against One America News Network and individual Trump surrogates. OAN reached a settlement with Smartmatic last year.

Write to Isabella Simonetti at isabella.simonetti@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 20, 2025 10:34 ET (14:34 GMT)

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