Jeanine Pirro’s private text messages, once hidden from public view, have become a lightning rod in the ongoing $2.7 billion legal battle between Smartmatic and Fox News. The recently unsealed exchanges, first reported by The Washington Post and submitted in court by Smartmatic, reveal Pirro’s deep involvement with President Trump’s 2020 reelection efforts and shed light on the internal dynamics at Fox News during a tumultuous chapter in American politics.
In September 2020, as the presidential race reached a fever pitch, Pirro texted then-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, boasting, “I work so hard for the party across the country. … I’m the #1 watched show on all news cable all weekend. I work so hard for the President and party.” According to The Hill, these texts not only underscore Pirro’s loyalty to Trump but also her pride in her influential platform.
Just a month later, her messages took a more personal turn. Pirro described an Oval Office meeting with Trump, venting her frustration with colleague Sean Hannity. “Sean [Hannity] is an egomaniac. I was in the Oval with Hariri talking to POTUS,” she wrote. “He storms in like he owns the place, throws his papers on the Pres desk and says, you don’t mind if I use your private bathroom, and walks into bathroom within Oval and uses it. Looks at me and says, I got to talk to him. Ie, you go. It’s all abt him, period. No one else matters.”
These candid remarks, now part of the public record, were submitted as evidence in Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox News—a case that has grown into one of the most significant media defamation battles in recent memory. Smartmatic, a London-based voting technology company, alleges that Fox News hosts, including Pirro, Lou Dobbs, and Maria Bartiromo, knowingly promoted false claims that the company’s software manipulated votes to favor Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The company claims these broadcasts devastated its reputation and ruined its prospects for expanding business in the United States.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Smartmatic’s recent motion for summary judgment, filed August 19, 2025, in New York Supreme Court, details how Fox News amplified phony allegations of vote manipulation. The motion describes how Fox News hosts repeatedly invited Trump’s attorneys, Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell, to air unsubstantiated claims that Smartmatic’s software was used in Dominion voting machines and altered millions of votes—despite internal warnings from Fox’s own research department that Smartmatic’s role in the 2020 election was limited to Los Angeles County and that its software was not used in Dominion machines.
The stakes are enormous: Smartmatic is seeking $2.7 billion in damages, arguing that Fox’s reporting obliterated its efforts to gain a foothold in the U.S. market. The company’s representative blasted Fox’s legal maneuvers as attempts to distract from “its long-standing campaign of falsehoods and defamation against Smartmatic,” asserting, “Fox lies and when caught they lie again to distract. Fox’s latest filing is just another attempt to divert attention.” Smartmatic insists it abided by the law in every jurisdiction where it operates.
Fox News, for its part, has mounted a vigorous defense. In a statement to The Hill, the network argued, “The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech. Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic’s executives getting indicted for bribery charges, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.”
Indeed, Fox has pointed to legal troubles faced by Smartmatic’s founder and two executives, who were indicted in 2024 by U.S. prosecutors for allegedly bribing Philippine officials to secure voting machine contracts. Fox contends that these issues, not its coverage, are the true source of Smartmatic’s woes. The network is also seeking Los Angeles County records that it believes could bolster its case, with prosecutors alleging that taxpayer funds from the county went into a slush fund to support illegal activities—a claim Smartmatic denies.
The legal battle is set against a backdrop of intense competition and shifting allegiances in the cable news world. After Fox News called Arizona for Biden on election night 2020—a move that infuriated Trump and his supporters—the network experienced a ratings decline. According to Smartmatic’s court filings, Fox executives, including Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, urged a “pivot” to give viewers more coverage of election fraud claims in an effort to stem the ratings slide and stop viewers from defecting to rivals like Newsmax. As one Fox host, Jesse Watters, texted colleague Greg Gutfeld, “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL.”
The fallout inside Fox News was swift. Political analyst Chris Stirewalt and longtime Washington bureau executive Bill Sammon, both involved in the Arizona call, were let go. Publicly, Fox said Stirewalt left as part of a reorganization and Sammon retired, but Smartmatic’s filing alleges Rupert Murdoch himself approved their departures to placate angry viewers. Dana Perino, co-host of “The Five,” reportedly told Stirewalt, “I explained to him — you were right, you didn’t cave, and you got fired for doing the right thing.” Both Stirewalt and Sammon now work for NewsNation.
Throughout November and December 2020, Fox’s top hosts continued to give airtime to Trump’s attorneys, who repeated false claims about Smartmatic and Dominion. The network’s research department had already informed producers that Smartmatic’s involvement in the election was limited, but the allegations persisted on air. Smartmatic argues this relentless coverage destroyed its business prospects, while Fox maintains it was simply reporting on newsworthy allegations made by the sitting president and his legal team—an act protected by the First Amendment.
The stakes in this case are high not just for the parties involved, but for the broader question of how media organizations cover contested political claims, especially when those claims are demonstrably false. Fox News settled a similar suit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million in 2023, but the Smartmatic case is poised to drag on for years, with a trial unlikely before late 2026.
Meanwhile, Jeanine Pirro herself has undergone a dramatic career shift. She left Fox News in May 2025 to become U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, appointed by President Trump. Pirro has vowed to help the president crack down on crime in the capital, drawing criticism from community activists and Democrats who oppose the administration’s tough-on-crime agenda.
As the legal wrangling continues, the revelations from Pirro’s text messages and the broader Smartmatic lawsuit offer an unprecedented glimpse into the behind-the-scenes calculations that shaped Fox News’s coverage of one of the most contentious elections in U.S. history. With billions of dollars and the future of press freedoms at stake, the nation—and the world—will be watching as the case unfolds.
