A judge in New York rejected a request by attorneys for Fox News to subpoena billionaire George Soros as part of the cable news channelās ongoing legal fight with voting systems company Smartmatic.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice David B. Cohen on Monday shot down a request from Fox to compel Soros to provide documents and testimony as part of its process of discovery in the case.
Soros is a progressive billionaire who often draws the ire of conservative media figures and Republican politicians.
Fox, in a court filing earlier this month, sought to depose Mark Malloch Brown, who is the president of the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation and served as chairman of Smartmaticās parent company.
āI base that on the finding that the crux of Smartmaticās claims is that Fox has asserted they were part of rigging [the election], not that Smartmatic was affiliated with George Soros, Alex Soros, or the OSF,ā Cohen said in open court on Monday, CNN reported. āThatās a peripheral matter ā at best, itās a possible rationale for defamation.ā
I agree with the decision. I take exception at calling ANY billionaire āprogressive.ā The author is bent.
I broadly agree, but Soros probably puts more money towards progressive causes than any other human being.
He shouldnāt be able to, because billionaires shouldnāt exist. We shouldnāt have to depend on the goodwill of an oligarch to fund progressive causes.
That said, Fox hates him for a reason.
Fox hates him because Rupert Murdoch spent a shitload of time and effort to artificially boost the Pound Sterling in 1992 as the Tories were fucking things up.
Soros bet against the Tories, publicly so, and made over a billion on Black Wednesday alone.
The Tories lost the next election in a landslide (five years later) and didnāt return to power until 2010.
September 1992 marks the beginning of Murdochās hatred of Soros.
No billionaires are innocent. Iām a longtime secular humanist and feel that my values espouse progressive ideology. Soros might fund entities that push left-leaning ideals, but not without their own agendas. I rankle at the idea that anybody with billions of dollars didnāt step on necks to get where they gotā¦ and that alone is enough to laugh when someone says heās defending the common man.
He wouldnāt know struggle if it cried to him at his feet. Billionaires should not be defended.
That being said, heās Foxās most favored boogeyman. They love to blame everything on him. I would be surprised if 1/10 things they blame on him are his doing. Murdoch is the ant-Soros and theyāre in a wrinkly billionaire supervillain fight. Weāre all casualties.