There are some interesting possibilities in play here.
1) FOX News didn't have to be the origin of the malicious statements. They simply needed to play someone else's malicious statements, knowing they were maliciuos.
2) This is the first target who isn't directly working for Trump. Well, officially at least.
3) FOX News probably has that much money.
4) We've talked about this briefly in another thread: FOX News can't take the "nobody reasonable would listen to us" deense. If they did, Biden could eject them from the White House.
Even if the defense fails.
And the big one:
5) FOX News can't settle. Powell and Giuliani are both done. Their careers are over. FOX News still wants to stay on the air. Admitting they intentionally pushed Fake News, which led to a murderous insurrection? They'd not only begging to be shut down, they're begging for, say, House Democrats to take legal actions
I'd like @
cubby to weigh in on #1 please. If someone makes an objectively false, malicious statement, and a second party quotes them over and over without saying "this is false", is the second party liable?