A Fox News producer who has sued her former network, saying she was coerced into providing not-entirely-honest testimony in the Dominion defamation lawsuit, has been fired. According to former Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo producer Abby Grossberg and her legal team, Grossberg was told she was fired this past Friday because she “improperly disclosed information regarding the Dominion/Fox Lawsuit that the Company purportedly believed was privileged.”
The firing happened less than a week after it was reported that the former Fox News producer was suing the network, saying that she had been set up, along with host Maria Bartiromo, to be scapegoats for all of the bad faith efforts taking place at Fox. According to her filing, Grossbert does not deny the very clear crapitude of her and Bartiromo’s actions, but insists that the male counterparts at the network—from hosts and producers all the way up the chain of command—are equally craptastic in how openly they have lied about what they present to the public as fact.
The fact that Fox News is in the middle of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit because of knowingly helping promote Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the elections were stolen, is set to have Donald Trump on the network to lie some more this week lends a lot of credence to Ms. Grossberg’s claims.
RELATED STORY: Fox News producer sues, claiming company is making her a scapegoat in Dominion lawsuit
Grossberg’s new filing adds more details to her claims of being pressured by Fox lawyers in her testimony. According to a new errata sheet—a legal filing of corrections for previous testimony—Grossberg makes some very big changes to her 2022 deposition. A most damning example is Grossberg changing her original answer, when asked whether or not she trusted the Fox producers with whom she worked, to a big “no,” followed by, “They’re activists, not journalists, and impose their political agendas on the programming.”
Grossberg also originally said in her September deposition that it wasn’t important to issue a correction when a guest said something untrue on Bartiromo’s Fox News program, “Sunday Morning Futures.” But in her new testimony, she said, “Yes,” because “although our guests had the right to answer how they pleased, it was Maria’s responsibility to push back against untrue statements with facts or follow-up questions.”
In the complaint, Grossberg also says that she was “pressured to respond with a generic ‘I do not recall’ whenever she had the opportunity, even if she, in fact, did have a recollection, albeit perhaps not a perfect one.” At the same time, Grossberg says she was supposed to fall on her sword and “should not reveal how she was unable to read and react to all the email warnings Dominion had sent to Fox News because of inadequate staffing and lack of resources.” Grossberg also says that she was “coached” to say that a pre-recorded segment with lying hair-dye dripper Rudy Giuliani (Trump’s lawyer at the time) was “live to tape.” A clear lie that would give plausible deniability to the network in that they could argue there was no way to edit out false election claims.
But that is not all. Grossber’s errata sheet has a lot of other juicy claims:
- She says she "caught someone [she] worked with plagiarizing, which deteriorated [her] trust in them."
- She was "isolated, overworked, undervalued, denied opportunities for promotion and generally treated significantly worse than her male counterparts, even when those men were less qualified than her."
- She also says that when she was working on Tucker Carlson’s show, the atmosphere was a predictably misogynistic one, where she was also harassed for being Jewish by Carlson's senior producer, Alexander McCaskill.
- As for McCaskill, already known around these parts as a scumbag, he had not-nice things to say about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene when watching a video of her doing CrossFit—reportedly calling Greene a “eunuch.”
Grossberg’s lawyers say that Friday’s firing is a clear act of retaliation on the part of the right-wing news network. Fox News’ lawyers responded to these new allegations by saying:
“Like most organizations, Fox News Media’s attorneys engage in privileged communications with our employees as necessary to provide legal advice. Last week, our attorneys advised Ms. Grossberg that, while she was free to file whatever legal claims she wished, she was in possession of our privileged information and was not authorized to disclose it publicly. We were clear that if she violated our instructions, Fox would take appropriate action including termination. Ms. Grossberg ignored these communications and chose to file her complaint without taking any steps to protect those portions containing Fox’s privileged information. We will continue to vigorously defend Fox against Ms. Grossberg’s unmeritorious legal claims, which are riddled with false allegations against Fox and our employees.”
Grossberg and Bartiromo have deservedly received flack for their part in the misinformation campaigns that comprise all of Fox News. One particularly damning piece of evidence came out during the defamation lawsuit, showing the two promoted a source that considered herself to maybe possibly be a “ghost.” Like a literal ghost, boo! Not the metaphorical kind.
Sign the petition: Democrats must boycott Fox News.
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It's just barely springtime in an off year, but there's been loads of election news lately, so co-hosts David Nir and David Beard have a super-sized roundup on this week's episode of The Downballot. The Davids recap the first round of voting in the race for Jacksonville mayor (which saw Democrats do unusually well) and the collapse of an effort to recall New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell before turning to big batch of 2024 updates.
On tap for the Senate: The GOP's desperate effort to compete with Democratic fundraising enthusiasm by recruiting self-funders; why Republicans are afraid the guy who succeeded John Boehner in Congress will try to challenge Sherrod Brown; and how Democrats' plans to clear the field in Michigan may not succeed. Plus developments in the battle for New Hampshire's governorship, a key House seat in Wisconsin, and the saga of Tennessee's answer to George Santos.