California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued Fox News on Friday, seeking damages of at least $787 million from the conservative network for allegedly defaming him by making misleading comments about a phone call with President Donald Trump.
“No more lies,” Newsom wrote in a tweet that announced his lawsuit, which the Democrat filed in Superior Court in Delaware, where Fox News is incorporated.
The monetary damages Newsom is seeking almost exactly match what Fox Corp., Fox News, and other Fox cable networks agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems in April 2023 to settle a Delaware lawsuit alleging they defamed Dominion by falsely claiming its machines swayed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election against Trump.
Newsom’s suit is focused on comments by Fox News anchor Jesse Waters, who had said Newsom lied about not having a purported call with Trump in early June.
The suit alleges Fox News was motivated to “lie and distort on behalf of the President.” Trump has been engaged in a feud with the governor over the deployment of California National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
The civil complaint also accuses Fox of harboring “significant ill will toward Governor Newsom because he is a strong champion of progressive values and an articulate voice fighting the radical Fox News agenda.”
Newsom’s lawyers, in a letter Friday to Fox News, said he is prepared to voluntarily dismiss his suit “if Fox News retracts the claim that he lied when speaking about President Trump not calling him on June 9.”
The letter also demands a “formal on-air apology” from Watters and Fox News in exchange for dismissal of the complaint.
“If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences — just like it did in the Dominion case,” Newsom said in a statement.
“I believe the American people should be able to trust the information they receive from a major news outlet,” the governor said. “Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”
Fox News, in a statement, said, “Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him.”
“We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed,” the network said.
The suit says the governor and Trump spoke for about 16 minutes during a call late June 6, or early June 7, depending on the time zone.
“The contents of that conversation are not germane to this matter,” the suit says, “but at no point did President Trump raise the demonstrations in Los Angeles which had begun that day, nor discuss the National Guard.”
“And when Governor Newsom attempted to discuss the situation in Los Angeles, President Trump steered the topic away.”
The suit notes that days later, on June 10, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he last spoke to Newsom “a day ago.”
The president said he had called the governor “to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job. Causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death.”
After learning of Trump’s claim, Newsom quickly denied there had been a call on that day, much less one that discussed the situation in Los Angeles.
“There was no call. Not even a voicemail,” Newsom wrote in a post on the social media site X.
On the evening of June 10, Watters, during an episode of “Jesse Watters Primetime,” played an edited clip of Trump that removed the president’s claim that he spoke to Newsom “a day ago,” the suit notes.
Watters then reported that Newsom had said there was no phone call.
Watters also said that Fox News host John Roberts had received Trump’s call logs, which showed the president and the governor last spoke on June 6 or 7.
“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him?” Watters asked. “Why would he do that?”
A chyron that played on Watters’ show said: “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”
The suit says, “Rather than leave the matter alone, or simply provide the facts, Fox News chose to defame Governor Newsom, branding him a liar.”
“Recognizing that President Trump was not correct, yet wanting to curry favor with the President, Fox News willfully distorted the facts,” the suit says.
Correction: Newsom’s suit alleges that Fox News was motivated to “lie and distort on behalf of the President.” That quote was misstated in an earlier version of this article.