Fox says Carlson breached contract with Twitter show: report

Fox News claimed Wednesday that Tucker Carlson violated his contract with the network after launching a new show on Twitter, according to a report by Axios.

The network reportedly notified its onetime anchor of the breach of contract claim shortly after he posted the first episode of his new show to the social media platform on Tuesday evening.

Carlson announced his plans to launch the new show last month, following his ouster from Fox News. However, he remains under contract with the network. 

“Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, Mr. Carlson’s ‘services shall be completely exclusive to Fox,’” the network said in its Wednesday letter, according to Axios.

Carlson is “prohibited from rendering services of any type whatsoever, whether ‘over the internet via streaming or similar distribution, or other digital distribution whether now known or hereafter devised,’” it added.

However, Carlson attorney Bryan Freedman argued that any action against his client would violate the First Amendment.

“Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds,” Freedman told Axios. “Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events.”

Carlson and Fox News parted ways in late April, after the network agreed to pay $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over its coverage of former President Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

Carlson’s first episode, a 10-minute video, had been viewed about 90 million times by Wednesday afternoon. However, that figure does not indicate how many individual users viewed the video or how long they watched for.