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Rupert Murdoch admitted during a sworn deposition that top personalities at Fox News promoted a baseless narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, according to a recent filing in a voting machine company’s billion-dollar lawsuit against the network.

The chair of the right-wing media empire said that hosts including Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election,” claims that the former president and his allies continue to amplify as he seeks re-election to office in 2024.

“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” Mr Murdoch said, according to court documents.

His remarks follow a revealing 192-page filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against the network, a bombshell document that compiles testimony and messages from Fox News employees that piece together how the network aired evidence-free claims about election “irregularities” to keep viewers enthralled with conspiracy theories against their own private admissions that, in their words, were “nonsense” and “bull****”.

But if they didn't keep up the lies, Sean Hannity discussed the damage a competitor could really do to Fox News, describing it as a potentially “serious problem.”

“That could happen,” Tucker Carlson replied.

The hosts were so alarmed by Newsmax’s rise, they were enraged when their colleague, FOX White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, tweeted a mere fact check of Trump’s election lies.

“Please get her fired,” Carlson told Hannity. “Seriously What the f**k? I’m actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Murdoch agreed that “it is not red or blue, it is green,” according to the court documents.

LINK: Rupert Murdoch admits Fox News stars ‘endorsed’ bogus election fraud claims