BY THE NUMBERS

By Ben Olson Reader Staff

$787.5 million

The amount Fox News will pay Dominion Voting Systems after a settlement offered April 17, the day the trial was slated to begin. As part of the settlement, Fox News admitted that its coverage of the 2020 election was false. The payment is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in U.S. history involving a media company.

“This is really the first time that anyone has paid a price for telling the lies of the 2020 election and we’re very proud of that,” said Justin Nelson, Dominion’s co-lead counsel. “It’s a lot of what we teach our kids, which is that the truth does indeed matter, and if you are lying, eventually there’s going to be consequences to that.”

“Fox and Dominion have reached a historic settlement,” Dominion CEO John Poulos wrote in a statement. “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees and our customers. Nothing can ever make up for that.”

Per the terms of agreement, Fox anchors aren’t required to acknowledge the settlement on air.

Dominion also has pending lawsuits against right-wing networks Newsmax and OAN, as well as against Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike “The My Pillow Guy” Lindell.

25 To 30

The estimated number of people who attended an “exclusive event” on April 16 called “Trigger Time with Kyle Rittenhouse,” held by the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee in southern Idaho. The committee advertised that attendees would have a chance to take photos and obtain autographs from Rittenhouse, who gained notoriety in August 2020 when he traveled from his home in Illinois to attend a protest in Kenosha, Wisc., and ended up shooting three people, killing two. Later, a court would find Rittenhouse not guilty of all murder charges against him. Since then, Rittenhouse has become a cause célèbre of the far right, with former-President Donald Trump and Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson both meeting with him.