Delaware Judge Orders Fox Corp. to Dump Hundreds of Files on Murdoch, Deleted Texts, Phone Hacking, and the Dominion Settlement In Massive Shareholder Lawsuit

A Delaware judge has just ordered Fox Corporation to hand over a mountain of internal records in a long-running shareholder lawsuit aimed at Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan, and other Fox directors. The files cover phone hacking, board minutes, emails, and the deletion of Rupert Murdoch’s text messages.

The order landed last week from Vice Chancellor Bonnie David. Fox fought to keep the material sealed. The judge sided with the plaintiffs across the board.

According to NPR, the haul includes roughly 700 documents that mention “phone hacking,” years of Fox board meeting minutes, emails from former Ford CEO and longtime Fox director Jacques Nasser’s Ford accounts, and a list of every email address ever used by Nasser or Rupert Murdoch.

Shareholders’ lawyers will also get sealed records from the still-pending Smartmatic case that deal with what the court calls Murdoch’s “spoliation” of records, legal speak for wiping texts.

The case was filed about three years ago by five New York City public-employee pension funds and Oregon’s public employee retirement system.

Those are Democrat-run, taxpayer-backed institutions using Delaware corporate law to try to pin Fox’s legal bills on the Murdochs personally.

The Associated Press reported earlier that the same funds accuse Murdoch and other Fox leaders of ignoring “red flags” after 2020.

The lawsuit was lit by Fox’s nearly $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in April 2023, one of the largest defamation payouts in American history. Smartmatic is still suing and wants $2.7 billion.

The Gateway Pundit said at the time that Fox rolled over. Joe Hoft wrote that the mainstream media was “giddy” and that Fox “gave the MSM everything they ever wanted.”

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told The Gateway Pundit the Dominion deal “never should have happened” and that “something else had to have been involved.”

Bill O’Reilly said the same week that Rupert Murdoch settled because he did not want to take the stand. “He told his lawyers settle it,” O’Reilly said.

Now those same settlement dollars are being used as the launch pad for this derivative suit. The pension funds want the Murdochs and other directors to personally eat the loss.

Seth Rich Is Back in the File

The complaint also points to Fox’s retracted 2017 reporting on murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich and what plaintiffs call an undisclosed settlement with the Rich family. Fox published, then yanked, a story suggesting Rich may have leaked Democratic emails to WikiLeaks.

The Gateway Pundit has covered the Rich case for years. In 2018 we reported that a federal judge dismissed the Rich parents’ lawsuit against Fox News.

This summer TGP reported attorney Ty Clevenger’s claim that the FBI had stashed hundreds of Seth Rich pages in a previously hidden SCIF room at headquarters, mixed with burn bags.

The Left treated any question about Rich as forbidden. Fox folded the story. The pension-fund lawyers now want to use that episode as proof the board ran a “scandal business model.”

Phone Hacking and Wiped Texts

The British phone-hacking scandal at News Corp. titles more than a decade ago has already cost that side of the Murdoch empire an estimated $1.5 billion, according to NPR.

Fox Corp. was split off from News Corp. after that mess. Plaintiffs want the “phone hacking” paper trail anyway, plus board records from Fox and related companies.

Then there are the texts.

Fox’s own lawyer, Anitha Reddy, told the Delaware court that claims of wholesale deletion are “incorrect,” but she admitted “there was a period … when text messages were not retained.”

Court argument, as reported by NPR, is that Rupert Murdoch auto-deleted texts until about April 2022, after Dominion had already sued.

Shareholders now get the sealed Smartmatic file on that spoliation fight. Fox, for its part, has accused Dominion and Smartmatic executives of destroying evidence too and asked for sanctions.

During the Dominion case, Dominion’s lawyers also accused several Fox personalities and executives of failing to preserve texts and emails. NPR notes that list included Pete Hegseth, now serving as Secretary of War.

The entire case may turn on one man: Jacques Nasser.

Nasser, the former Ford chief, sat for more than two decades on Murdoch boards at News Corp., 21st Century Fox, and Fox Corp., including as lead independent director until 2023.

Plaintiffs say he was never truly independent, that he backed the family through the UK hacking crisis, a BSkyB stock buyback that increased Murdoch clout, and the selection of other directors. If a judge later finds Nasser was not independent of Rupert Murdoch, plaintiffs argue more than half the Fox board fails Delaware’s independence test and the case can go to trial.

Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster already refused to throw the suit out in December 2024. David’s new order is the discovery hammer.