Tucker Carlson: Litigation Supernova

RIP

Tucker Carlson

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

It’s been 24 hours since the news broke that Tucker Carlson had been fired from Fox News, and the ticktocks of his email getting cut, followed by a phone call from CEO Suzanne Scott intimating that the decision was made by Rupert Murdoch himself, are delightful.

The Washington Post initially reported that Carlson’s sin was pissing off the C-suite by criticizing management in the texts released during discovery in the Dominion defamation suit. But that seemed pretty unlikely, since Fox’s management has had eyes on those messages long before they entered the public domain. Later the LA Times confirmed that Murdoch made the decision due to litigation risk, not just from Dominion and its competitor Smartmatic, but also from Carlson’s former producer Abby Grossberg, who has filed two lawsuit against Fox, Carlson, and various other network figures.

The federal suit in New York describes a classic hostile work environment at “Tucker Carlson Today” where women were routinely demeaned and sexualized.

[Senior Executive Producer Justin] Wells and [Managing Editor Alexander] McCaskill often remarked that [a female employee], a TCT Booker who reported to Ms. Grossberg, should use her sex appeal to the TCT team’s advantage, such as by “sleep[ing] with Elon Musk to get [an] interview” and that she could be his “next wife.” [The employee] herself, likely feeling as if she needed to “fit in” and add commentary matching her misogynist work environment, would respond that men “masturbated” to her.

There were also allegations of routine bigotry toward Jews, including McCaskill placing a miniature Christmas tree next to Grossberg’s desk with a sign affixed to it reading “Hanukkah Bush.”

The Delaware state case has flown somewhat under the radar, since the local docket is such a pain in the a** to access. But in that defamation suit, Grossberg makes some other allegations about Carlson which may have clarified the risk to management of his continuing employment at the network.

Sponsored

A section called “As Part of its Ongoing Conspiracy to Shift Blame Away from Fox News For Maliciously Publishing Defamatory Statements About Dominion, Tucker Carlson Tonight’s Team Attempts to Involve Ms. Grossberg in a Brazen Plot to Cover Up Fox News’s Fraud and Related Culpability in the Instigation of the January 6 Insurrection in Washington, D.C.” might have been of particular concern to someone seeking to minimize future litigation risk to the network. You know, hypothetically.

Grossberg described Carlson and his staff as boasting that they controlled the Republican party, with the ability to choose the presidential candidate and speaker of the House. The team similarly scoffed at the Dominion lawsuit, expressing no intention to change their reporting practices, since insurance would cover any damage award. Indeed, Carlson intended to use security camera footage of the Capitol Riot given to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to “prove” that FBI agitators were ultimately responsible for the violence on January 6, 2021.

Toward this last goal, Carlson demanded that Grossberg find guests who would spin a conspiracy theory that the (still ongoing) trial of several Proud Boys was being dragged out to hide the fact that the FBI — which was then run by Trump appointees — had seeded the crowd with informants and plants:

Upon information and belief, in early-March 2023, Mr. Carlson attempted to spin and manufacture another false narrative to defray blame from Fox News about the January 6th insurrection, this time, characterizing the Capitol attack as an FBI coup, and not the logical result of Fox News’s reckless 2020 election fraud coverage. Specifically, Mr. Carlson requested that his team investigate the ongoing Proud Boys trial, which he asserted was “taking forever” because the “Biden Administration [wa]s trying to hide the huge number of FBI spies it had placed in the group.” As Head of Booking, Ms. Grossberg was twice directed to reach out to Dan Hull, one of the defense attorneys representing the Proud Boys, who indicated to her that he was available to come on to the TCT show as a guest but emphatically denied Mr. Carlson’s theory. Instead, Mr. Hull insisted that “no one made my client go up the hill. The Proud Boys wanted to,” and the FBI angle Mr. Carlson sought to peddle was “on the conspiracy side.” When Ms. Grossberg relayed Mr. Hull’s message to Tom Fox, a Senior Producer for TCT and her superior, he blithely replied “That doesn’t fit with what Tucker is looking for. You’ll have to find someone else who will say that.” Ms. Grossberg was told to ask Mr. Hull yet again if he would reconsider, to which Mr. Hull replied, “Please just tell [Tucker], if I get on the show, I will walk out if he asks about the FBI setting it up. […] Blaming the FBI for Jan 6th doesn’t cut it.” Mr. Carlson then requested that Ms. Grossberg investigate whether any other defense attorneys, including Steven Metcalf, would tout the conspiracy on air.

Which might well give you indigestion if you’d, say, just written a check for $787 million to avoid having to go in front of a jury on the issue of actual malice.

Sponsored

In addition to that, Grossberg makes some pretty damning claims about Fox’s lawyers and their conduct in the Dominion litigation. The network originally tried to head off Grossberg’s federal suit in New York by filing an emergency application in state court to block her disclosure of what they describe as attorney-client material. It even tried to get the material redacted after she went ahead and filed anyway — and the revelations in the Delaware case make it clear why.

Grossberg claims she was bullied into giving false testimony, both to protect stars like Carlson and to play down the degree to which pervasive sexism at the network deprived Maria Bartiromo and her staff the resources needed to factcheck the false election claims being peddled by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Similarly, she says that she was not permitted to amend her deposition transcript specifically because she was in a labor dispute with the network and they feared she’d tell the truth.

The errata sheet is attached to her complaint, and it is bonkers. For instance, in response to a question about whether her boss David Clark had called for Rudy Giuliani to be banned as a guest because of his false election claims, Grossberg originally said:

I just recall him expressing caution. That’s the most I can confidently, with confidence, recall.

Her amended answer was quite different:

David Clark texted me that we could “keep” Rudy Giuliani in our lineup meaning Giuliani had been cleared on a corporate level to keep appearing on TV unfiltered. Clark’s only concern was that Giuliani might criticize Fox News for what Giuliani alleged was our premature calling of the electoral votes of the state of Arizona as having went to Joe Biden, which we understood was a state that actually had not been officially called for a presidential candidate, not anything having to do with what Giuliani said about the legitimacy of the election or about any alleged fraud committed by entities like Dominion who were involved in the voting process.

And the reason was the same one she gave upwards of 30 times in her amendments:

Impermissible coaching and coercion by Fox attorneys. Based on what I understood and took away from the deposition preparation sessions I had with Fox’s legal team, which were coercive and intimidating. I felt that I had to do everything possible to avoid becoming the ‘star witness’ for Dominion or else I would be seriously jeopardizing my career at Fox News and would be subjected to worse terms and conditions of employment than offered to male employees as I understood it.

Well, good thing they cleaned house and got rid of Tucker Carlson. Looks they’ve gotten rid of the ONE BAD APPLE and it’ll be smooth, ethical sailing from here on out.

Grossberg v. Fox Corp [Docket via Court Listener]


Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.