TV host Tucker Carlson and Fox News have “agreed to part ways,” Fox said in a statement Monday.
“We appreciate his service to the network,” Fox said in the statement about the top-rated host, noting that Carlson’s last show was Friday.
The network did not provide a reason for Carlson’s departure.
Also, Tucker Carlson Tonight senior executive producer Justin Wells was fired Monday, multiple sources told ABC News.
The decision to fire Carlson and his producer was made late Friday night by Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, a source familiar with the matter told ABC News .
Wells declined to comment to ABC News. A Fox News spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news comes nearly a week after a $787.5 million settlement was reached between the network and Dominion Voting Systems, which had accused Fox of knowingly pushing false conspiracy theories that the voting machine company vote rigged the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden, in what Dominion claims it was. an effort to combat concerns about declining ratings and viewer retention.
Tucker Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” poses for photos in a Fox News Channel studio on March 2, 2017, in New York.
Richard Drew/AP, FILE
Fox defended its coverage, dismissing the lawsuit as a “political crusade in search of a financial windfall.”
A Dominion spokesman declined to comment on Carlson’s departure when contacted by ABC News.
As part of its discovery process, Dominion in February filed court documents containing emails, texts, testimony and other private communications from Fox News staff, including Carlson, that appeared to cast doubt on claims involving Dominion, in compared to what they said on -air to their viewers.
On Nov. 8, Carlson sent a private text message to his producer that the allegations about Dominion were “absurd,” according to Dominion’s filing. Also that day, Carlson’s producer texted her about his own doubts.
“I don’t believe there is any evidence of voter fraud that changed the election,” producer Alex Pfeiffer texted Carlson, according to the lawsuit. “The software is absurd,” Carlson allegedly replied.
On his show just one night later, Carlson pushed further suggestions of fraud, though he said “we don’t know anything about the software.”
“We don’t know how many votes were stolen on Tuesday night. We don’t know anything about the software that many say was rigged. We don’t know. We should find out,” he said. “But this is what we know. At a bigger level, at the highest levels, our system is actually not what we thought it was. It’s not as fair as it should be. Not even close.”
Carlson during that program also said that “false claims of fraud can be as destructive as the fraud itself,” according to the filing, and that “the fraud that we can confirm does not appear to be sufficient to alter election results.” We should be honest and tell you that…”
In mid-November, Carlson also texted one of his producers that “there was not enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election, according to the documents, and later said that Sidney Powell, one of the attorneys from then-President Donald Trump and a vocal promulgator of electoral denialism, “it’s a lie.”
Months later, on the day of the January 6 attack in the US capital, Carlson called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer” in a text message to the same producer.
