Fox News is going to war with Tucker Carlson.
That turned out to be a giant mistake.
And now one secret phone call about Tucker Carlson has all hell breaking loose at Fox News.
Fox News wants to keep paying off Tucker Carlson’s contract until it expires at the end of 2024 to keep him from restarting his show elsewhere.
Carlson upped the ante in this fight by releasing a video announcing his intention to broadcast his show as a livestream on Twitter.
This would directly challenge the no-compete clause in Carlson’s Fox News contract.
But Carlson’s legal team contends Fox News breached his contract and offered as proof a previously undisclosed phone call from Fox News legal counsel to a Carlson associate.
In the phone call, Dinh admitted that someone at Fox News leaked Carlson’s texts to the press to try and embarrass him.
The Daily Caller reports:
Fox News’ Chief Legal Counsel Viet Dinh allegedly called a close associate of Carlson’s on May 3 asking to have a message relayed to Carlson. Dinh expressed regret at how the previous week had played out in the media, according to two sources, reassuring Carlson’s camp that Fox News had “not authorized” the leaks that led to several negative headlines. Sources say Dinh also relayed that the head of Fox News PR, Irena Briganti, had been warned she would be “fired” if she were caught leaking. Critically, he also confessed, according to the sources, that the network’s leaders suspected a member of the board of directors had been speaking to the press about Tucker without authorization.
Carlson’s team believes the leaker was Fox News Board of Directors member Anna Dias.
Bryan Freedman, who is representing Carlson in the fight to free him from his Fox News contract, told the Daily Caller that this call was proof Fox News violated the terms of Carlson’s contract by disparaging him in the press.
“It strains credulity that, immediately after agreeing to pay almost $780 million to settle serious allegations of misconduct that a member of Fox’s Board of Directors would be engaging in an attempted smear campaign by illegally leaking information about Tucker Carlson,” Freedman stated. “However, we have to trust that it is true when the Chief Legal Officer informs Tucker that he believes it to be the case.”
Carlson argues he is free to start a show anywhere he wants and that Twitter will be his new home.
Now it’s up to Fox News to decide how seriously they want to fight Carlson and what risk the network runs of more embarrassing disclosures about other hosts emerging as part of any lawsuit.
Renewed Right will keep you up to date on any new developments in this ongoing story.