Jeanine Pirro’s Show Runs Same Fact-Check as Lou Dobbs — At End of Show With Guest Host Filling In
Regular viewers of Fox News programs might have experienced a little déjà vu on Saturday, when Justice with Judge Jeanine aired a segment fact-checking certain false claims made about voting technology company Smartmatic — virtually the same exact fact-check that Lou Dobbs had aired on his Fox Business show on Friday.
The kerfuffle started after Smartmatic’s attorneys sent a letter to several media networks including Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax demanding they retract dozens of comments made by various show hosts and guests that promulgated conspiracy theories accusing Smartmatic of election fraud. The letter warned if the networks did not retract the comments, Smartmatic would sue them for defamation.
In the original airing of the fact-check, Dobbs introduced an interview with Eddie Perez, who he called “one of the leading authorities on open source software for elections.” A chyron reading “CLOSER LOOK AT CLAIMS ABOUT SMARTMATIC’ was displayed on the screen. The segment then cut to an unknown interviewer running through several questions with Perez debunking various conspiracy theories that had been spread about Smartmatic.
Saturday’s episode of Jeanine Pirro’s show ran the same play, except Pirro was nowhere to be seen. Guest host Lisa Boothe filled in and introduced the same video clip with Perez. Fox confirmed to Mediate that Pirro will be out on vacation until January 2.
“Welcome back to Justice,” said Boothe in the show’s last block, as the chyron “CLOSER LOOK AT CLAIMS ABOUT SMARTMATIC’ popped up on the bottom of the screen once more. “In our weeks long look into election integrity, we have heard concerns about both voting machines and voting software, specifically a company called Smartmatic. We reached out to Eddie Perez for his insight. He is the global director of tech development at the Open Source Election Technology Institute. His team develops open source software for elections and we asked him what he knew about Smartmatic and the claims some have made about that company.”
Like Dobbs, Boothe did not mention that “the claims some have made about that company” were made by people on her network.
“Have you seen any evidence of the software was used to flip votes in this election?” asked the anonymous interviewer.
“I have not seen any evidence that the software was used to delete, change, alter anything related to vote tabulation,” replied Perez.
The video continued like that through a series of questions smacking down several false claims.
“Well, that’s it for me tonight,” said Boothe, closing out the show. “I am Lisa Boothe, filling in for Judge Jeanine. Thank you so much for watching!”
As Mediaite previously reported, this fact-check is also planned to air on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show on Sunday.
Watch the video above, via Fox News.
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