A judge in New York rejected a request by attorneys for Fox News to subpoena billionaire George Soros as part of the cable news channel’s ongoing legal fight with voting systems company Smartmatic.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice David B. Cohen on Monday shot down a request from Fox to compel Soros to provide documents and testimony as part of its process of discovery in the case.

Soros is a progressive billionaire who often draws the ire of conservative media figures and Republican politicians.

Fox, in a court filing earlier this month, sought to depose Mark Malloch Brown, who is the president of the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation and served as chairman of Smartmatic’s parent company.

“I base that on the finding that the crux of Smartmatic’s claims is that Fox has asserted they were part of rigging [the election], not that Smartmatic was affiliated with George Soros, Alex Soros, or the OSF,” Cohen said in open court on Monday, CNN reported. “That’s a peripheral matter — at best, it’s a possible rationale for defamation.”

  • Orbituary@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    No billionaires are innocent. I’m a longtime secular humanist and feel that my values espouse progressive ideology. Soros might fund entities that push left-leaning ideals, but not without their own agendas. I rankle at the idea that anybody with billions of dollars didn’t step on necks to get where they got… and that alone is enough to laugh when someone says he’s defending the common man.

    He wouldn’t know struggle if it cried to him at his feet. Billionaires should not be defended.

    That being said, he’s Fox’s most favored boogeyman. They love to blame everything on him. I would be surprised if 1/10 things they blame on him are his doing. Murdoch is the ant-Soros and they’re in a wrinkly billionaire supervillain fight. We’re all casualties.