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Wilmington, Delaware CNN — Fox News reached a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday as the cas…

5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history inv…

The deal was announced hours after the jury was sworn in at the Delaware Superior Court.

Rumors of a settlement swirled in the courthouse when, after a lunch break, the proceedings dramatically ground to a ha…

Attorneys representing Dominion Voting Systems, leave the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington, Del.

, after the defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News was settled just as the jury trial was set t…

Julio Cortez/AP “The parties have resolved their case,” Judge Eric Davis said, before dismissing the 12-member jury, cr…

The groundbreaking settlement “represents vindication and accountability,” Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson said.

“For our democracy to endure for another 250 years, and hopefully much longer, we must a commitment to facts… Today rep…

” The right-wing network said in a statement that it “acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Domi…

But Fox won’t have to admit on-air that it spread lies about Dominion, a Dominion representative told CNN.

5 million payout is roughly half of the $1.

6 billion that Dominion initially sought, though it is nearly 10 times the company’s valuation from 2018, and roughly e…

Fox avoids painful six-week trial The last-minute agreement means the closely watched case is over and won’t proceed to…

By settling with Dominion, influential Fox News executives and prominent on-air personalities will be spared from testi…

Fox lawyers leave the courthouse after Dominion Voting Systems and Fox settled a defamation lawsuit for $787.

5 million, avoiding trial, over Fox's coverage of debunked election-rigging claims, in Delaware Superior Court, in Wilm…

Eduardo Munoz/Reuters The witness list included Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, his CEO son Lachlan Murdoch, a…

Damning emails, texts, and deposition testimony made public during the case revealed that these figures, and many other…

But the lies were spread on-air anyway.

Rupert Murdoch thought the election denialism was “really crazy,” even as Fox personalities peddled those same claims t…

Carlson said he “passionately” hates Donald Trump, whose presidency was a “disaster.

” Fox hosts, producers, fact-checkers, and senior executives privately said in the on-air claims of a stolen election w…

” These revelations generated months of blistering headlines for Fox as the case moved toward trial.

By settling now, Fox deprived Dominion a chance to further expose its dishonesty with a weeks-long trial.

“This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” Fox said in a statement Tu…

“We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive…

” Fox News and Fox Corporation – its parent company, which was also a defendant – maintain they never defamed Dominion,…

Dramatic days in Delaware Speculation of a settlement reached a fever pitch in recent days, especially after the court …

The jury selection process wrapped up as planned Tuesday morning, and both sides prepped for opening statements.

They even briefly tangled over objections to specific slides in their presentations.

But when the proceedings didn’t promptly resume after lunch, the chances of a deal seemed to rise by the minute, even t…

The racially diverse jury of six men and six women was brought back into the court, ready for their front-row seat to a…

But Davis, the judge, instead told the panel they helped spur a settlement.

“Your presence here, short compared to what you thought, and uneventful in a certain sense, was extremely important,” D…

“Without you, the parties would not have been able to resolve their situation.

” Many on the Dominion side cast the settlement as a victory for democracy and for truth itself.

“Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the cust…

While the Dominion case is now over, Fox News is still facing a second major defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, anothe…

That case is still in the discovery process, and a trial isn’t expected anytime soon.

For its part, Dominion still has pending lawsuits against right-wing TV networks Newsmax and OAN, as well as against Tr…

They all deny wrongdoing.

CNN’s Liam Reilly and Danny Freeman contributed to this story