WILMINGTON, Del. — Ex-Fox News producer Abby Grossberg said she recently found more evidence relevant to Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against her former employer and plans to turn it over to the court.
Grossberg, who worked as a senior producer for hosts Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, alleged in a new sworn statement obtained by NBC News that Fox lawyers ignored repeated reminders about an additional cellphone in her possession and did not search it during court-ordered discovery.
In the statement, Grossberg said she repeatedly told Fox lawyers that she had an inoperable company-issued cellphone that she used during 2020 election coverage. Fox lawyers told her to hang on to the device but never searched it or copied her files, as they did with her other phones, according to the statement.
Grossberg was fired in March after she filed a lawsuit claiming that Fox lawyers coerced her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case and that she was being made a scapegoat for the network’s 2020 election coverage. Fox says she was fired for divulging privileged information.
Grossberg, in the new affidavit, said a forensic expert recently pulled two recordings off the broken phone that she recorded using an app called Otter, which simultaneously records and creates text transcriptions of audio files. The recordings, which she details in the affidavit and audio of which was shared with NBC News, are of phone interviews she participated in with Bartiromo: one with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and another with two sources who claimed to know about Dominion voter fraud.
She said she used Otter in the normal course of her work as a producer. Recordings are saved in the Otter app, and they can also be shared.
Grossberg’s attorney, Gerry Filippatos, said the statement would be filed with the Delaware court as early as Tuesday, the day the trial is set to begin.
“Abby Grossberg stands ready to do her part to ensure that justice is done; that those who are licensed and obligated to tell the truth, and guide others to the truth, do just that. As soon as possible and practicable, Ms. Grossberg will continue to set the record straight by telling all she knows to those who need to know,” Filippatos said in a statement.
In last week’s pretrial court appearances, Dominion attorneys played other recordings Grossberg made as a producer, including one with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that Dominion said they’d received from Fox just the previous week.
That, along with confusion over News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s current role at Fox News, appeared to frustrate Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis. Murdoch is Fox News’ executive chair, too.
He admonished the Fox lawyers for withholding evidence and not being straightforward with the court, and he said the company would have to foot the bill if an additional deposition was necessary. He also said he was considering appointing a special master to investigate legal misconduct by the attorneys over whether Fox misrepresented their discovery efforts.
“Abby Grossberg is not Dominion’s problem. It’s not my problem. Abby Grossberg is a Fox problem,” Davis said at the hearing last week.
“It may not show, but I’m very uncomfortable,” he added.
Dominion did not respond to requests for comment.
“FOX News has complied with its discovery obligations,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement.
At last week’s hearing, Fox lawyer Michael Skokna said Grossberg had not disclosed the existence of the Otter recordings.
In her new statement, Grossberg said that Skokna’s claim was “absolutely false” and that she had told Fox lawyers about Otter in August.
“I proactively and specifically disclosed to the Fox News attorneys that I used an app called Otter for work purposes during the relevant time period,” she said, adding that a Fox attorney then asked her to explain how Otter works.
In a filing dated Monday, Fox lawyers added that while they had not known of Grossberg’s Otter recordings, they had shared some of Grossberg’s Otter transcripts found on email. The Giuliani transcript was shared with Dominion 10 months ago, they said.
Grossberg said that she recently asked a forensic expert to review the older phone and that the expert uncovered the recordings of the two interviews. Grossberg’s attorney shared the audio with NBC News.
The first recording, made on Nov. 7, 2020, according to Grossberg’s affidavit, was of a phone interview Bartiromo and Grossberg conducted with Cruz to discuss a planned broadcast appearance. Cruz is heard discussing voter fraud allegations — including an irregularity in Michigan, which uses Dominion machines in most counties — but stresses the need for facts and proof.
“It falls on the shoulders of the legal team that is bringing these cases to ascertain the facts. And it just can’t be, you know, someone tweeted this. It’s got to be demonstrable facts that can be laid out with evidence, because that’s what a court of law is gonna look to. Not just an allegation, but actual facts,” Cruz said on the recording. “And I hope when Rudy comes on the show tomorrow, he has some of those facts.”
Cruz did not respond to a request for comment.
Grossberg said in her affidavit that the second recording, made on Nov. 13, 2020, was of a background interview Grossberg and Bartiromo conducted with a banker named Doug Anderson, the CEO of Wall Street Capital Partners, and a male source who was granted anonymity to participate.
The men discuss conspiratorial claims about Dominion voting machines; Bartiromo promises to help “expose as much as we can,” while Grossberg presses for more information.
Anderson did not respond to a request for comment.
Grossberg said in the new statement that after she was fired last month, Fox asked her to return her ID badge and her company-issued cellphone. She said she complied but added that she forgot that she still had the older, broken device at the time.
Chris Mattei, a lawyer who sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for defamation on behalf of families of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, said Dominion’s lawyers may well be able to capitalize on the situation.
“The better thing that Dominion’s lawyers might think about is the extent to which they can use any evidence or cover up as affirmative evidence of something like consciousness of guilt,” he said, especially if Grossberg testifies for Dominion.
Dominion included Grossberg on a list of proposed witnesses filed with the court.
“Sometimes evidence of a cover-up or bad faith in litigation — like that evidence itself — a jury might find pretty compelling,” he said.
Grossberg has filed to intervene in the Delaware defamation case, but the judge has not yet ruled on the matter.
