Settlement reached in defamation lawsuit against Lou Dobbs, Fox News

A settlement has been reached in a Venezuelan businessman’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and host Lou Dobbs over statements accusing him of helping tilt the 2020 presidential election.

In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Louis Lee Stanton filed in the Southern District of New York over the weekend, lawyers for the two parties wrote they had reached an agreement to resolve the matter. Financial terms of the agreement were not specified.

Majed Khalil filed his lawsuit in 2021, alleging statements made on Dobbs’s social media and by pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell on Dobbs’s Fox Business show defamed him by accusing the businessman of executing an “electoral 9/11” and helping change ballot counts in voting machines.

“The 2020 Election is a cyber Pearl Harbor: The leftwing establishment have aligned their forces to overthrow the United States government,” Dobbs wrote in a Twitter post that remains online.

According to Khalil’s complaint, as Powell was appearing on one of his shows, the host asked, “You say these four individuals led the effort to rig this election. How did they do it?”

Dobbs and Fox’s attorney had moved to have the case dismissed on First Amendment grounds, a motion the judge denied last fall.

“This matter has been resolved amicably by both sides,” a Fox News spokesperson said when contacted Sunday by The Hill. “We have no further comment.”

Fox canceled Dobbs’s show in February of 2021.

The network is separately fighting a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over similar claims about the 2020 election made on its air. Fox has also argued the claims made about Dominion in that case are protected by the First Amendment.

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news,” the network said in a recent statement about the Dominion case. “Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings.” 

A trial in the Dominion case is slated to begin later this month.

Updated: 7:12 p.m.