Fox News producer said Laura Ingraham's interest in false Dominion voter fraud claims 'is going to give me a fucking aneurysm'

• In a text message, a Fox News producer complained about Laura Ingraham promoting election conspiracy theories.
• "This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm," Tommy Firth texted a Fox News colleague.

While Fox News personalities were publicly treating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election as legitimate and worthy of discussion, employees behind the scenes were complaining that they could not get them to listen to reason, according to text messages revealed Thursday in a court filing from Dominion Voting Systems.

"This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm," Tommy Firth, a producer for Fox News Channel's Laura Ingraham, texted company executive Ron Mitchell, writing that, "as many times as I've told Laura it's bs, she sees shit posts and trump tweeting about it."

"This is the Bill Gates/microchip angle to voter fraud," Mitchell responded. "How's it going [with] the kooks?" he texted later.

Like other Fox employees, Ingraham had promoted false claims of fraud — and, in particular, the notion that votes were rigged by Dominion, which manufactures voting machines and election software.

The company is suing Fox News for defamation, seeking $1.6 billion in damages, and obtained the text messages through the discovery process.

Thursday's filing from Dominion shows that Fox's hosts would later come to share their producer's doubts, at least privately.

Ingraham, one of Fox's prime-time anchors, had promoted numerous claims of voter fraud on her show, including an exclusive with an anonymous, purported Nevada poll worker who claimed to have witnessed colleagues filling out ballots, en masse, for President Joe Biden right next to a marked Biden campaign vehicle. Numerous audits and investigations have failed to uncover any evidence of mass voter fraud in any state.

On Twitter, Ingraham also promoted the thesis that the vote was rigged electronically.

"Sidney Powell says that 'the evidence of use of 'Dominion System' is coming in so fast she 'can't even process it all,'" Ingraham posted Nov. 16 on Twitter, linking to a Fox News interview with the attorney.

Two days later, however, Ingraham was expressing the belief — privately — that Powell was not credible; neither, she added, was Trump's personal attorney and former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani.

"Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy," she texted fellow anchor Tucker Carlson, who in an exchange with his own producer had described Powell as a "[f]ucking bitch" who was "lying."

In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson argued that the messages were not evidence of libel, writing: "There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan."

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