Abby Grossberg, the former Tucker Carlson producer accusing Fox News of pressuring her to give false testimony in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, filed amended legal complaints on Tuesday claiming there are secret Fox audio recordings of Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies.
Grossberg, who is suing the conservative network for harassment and a toxic work environment, claims that the behind-the-scenes conversations with Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump campaign officials featured them admitting they had no evidence to support their Dominion election fraud lies.
Additionally, she says an adviser of former President Donald Trump pointed out the importance of January 6 weeks before the Capitol attacks, noting that the adviser said there were “no issues” with voting machines and January 6 was now the “backstop” for determining the election.
Once a senior booking producer for pro-Trump Fox News host Maria Bartiromo before moving to Carlson’s show, Grossberg filed two lawsuits against Fox News last month alleging that the network’s lawyers tried to coerce her into falsely testifying in Dominion’s defamation case. She claims that the network sought to make her and Bartiromo scapegoats in the bombshell lawsuit, all while deflecting blame from Fox executives.
Dominion has accused Fox News of knowingly airing lies about widespread election fraud in an attempt to boost sagging ratings after MAGA viewers bolted following the 2020 election, allegations the network vehemently denies. The case is scheduled to go to trial next week, and Grossberg has suggested she would testify on the voting software firm’s behalf. She was recently subpoenaed in Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against Fox.
After Smartmatic subpoenaed Grossberg earlier this month, her lawyers claimed that Grossberg had previously surrendered access to certain evidence to Fox News. However, according to the attorneys, it didn’t appear that the evidence was ever provided to the Delaware court overseeing the Dominion case.
In her motions to amend her complaints against Fox News on Tuesday, Grossberg claimed that in preparation for their appearances on Bartiromo’s weekend Fox News show, she had recorded multiple conversations with Giuliani and Powell following the 2020 election. Those discussions, which were heard by the network’s control room, were recorded by Grossberg using Otter—a transcription device popular with journalists.
During a recording in mid-November 2020, according to Grossberg, Giuliani admitted to Bartiromo that the Trump campaign couldn’t prove some of its Dominion allegations. Asked by Bartiromo what evidence he had implicating Dominion in rigging the election, Giuliani allegedly said “that’s a little harder.” He also conceded that he had no evidence to back up the conspiracy theory that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had an interest in Dominion. “I’ve read that. I can’t prove that,” he said.
On that same recording, Grossberg says that Powell claimed that a “registered agent for Smartmatic” was on President Joe Biden’s “transition team.” However, when pressed by Bartiromo on her most compelling evidence that voting software flipped votes for Biden, Powell merely said the Trump campaign had “a witness who’s given a foreign declaration about how [the voting software] was created, why it was created, and watched it work.”
Perhaps most damning, however, is a December recording between Grossberg, Bartiromo, and someone described as a “high-ranking advisor to and spokesperson for President Trump and the Trump 2020 presidential campaign.” The campaign official, according to the amended complaint, admitted “there were in fact no issues” with any purportedly fraudulent voting machines in Georgia.
“More broadly, however, the Trump advisor stated that the purpose of the call was to highlight the importance of the impending January 6th date as the true ‘backstop’ for determining the validity of the election, as this was ultimately the date when the House and Senate would count the electoral votes,” Grossberg’s complaint reads. “The Trump advisor voiced their concern to Ms. Bartiromo that there had been ‘virtually no pick up of the January 6th date’ in the media.”
Grossberg’s legal team claims that despite having access to her devices multiple times, Fox News “deliberately or recklessly failed to produce highly relevant recordings of behind-the-scenes conversations” to Dominion in the course of its lawsuit.
“We hope that by laying bare the egregiously unlawful conduct of Fox News with respect to its treatment of Ms. Grossberg as a fact witness in the Dominion case (including coercing incomplete and shaded testimony from her and covering up key documents that both inculpate Fox News as a malicious actor and exculpate Ms. Grossberg from unjust allegations of journalistic malfeasance) in our proposed Second Amended Complaint, all of the facts and issues necessary for justice to be served will be timely put before the Delaware Superior Court,” said Grossberg’s attorney Tanvir Rahman.
In a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that Dominion could not mention the Jan. 6 Capitol attack during this month’s trial. “We’re not putting the January 6th attack on [trial]. That may be for another court at another time. It’s not for this one,” Davis said.
“Fox has complied with its discovery obligations in the Dominion case,” a Fox News spokesperson told The Daily Beast in a statement.
