Newsom Sues Fox News for $787 Million, Saying It Lied About Trump Phone Call

Updated 12:20 p.m. Friday

Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a defamation lawsuit on Friday against Fox News and one of its hosts, claiming the network lied about the timing of a phone call with President Donald Trump to protect the president and damage the governor politically.

The dispute stems from a phone call in early June as immigration raids and protests swept Los Angeles and the president deployed armed troops to the city over the governor’s objections.

The lawsuit seeks damages of $787 million — the same amount Fox News paid to settle a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over false election conspiracies. In a letter to the network, Newsom’s lawyers offer to dismiss the suit if Fox retracts the claim and both the network and host Jesse Watters issue on-air apologies.

The suit marks an increasingly aggressive posture by the Democratic governor against Trump and his allies. Newsom, in the past, has relished high-profile dust-ups with the president and Fox News but has been careful not to overtly antagonize Trump in his second term. The L.A. troop confrontation seems to have changed that.

In a conversation broadcast on his Substack today, Newsom said he’s been attacked on Fox for years but that this situation “crossed a red line.” He said he just wants an apology.

“The beef is you can’t maliciously slander someone, you can’t defame someone by altering facts, editing facts, knowingly doing that,” he said. “Look, we all know Fox is a propaganda network, but it’s under the guise of being a news organization, being journalists. And there’s rules of engagement as it relates to that.”

In a statement, a Fox News spokesperson lashed out at Newsom and promised to fight the suit.

“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed,” the statement read.

The lawsuit, filed in Delaware, accuses Fox News and Watters of lying about when the phone call between Newsom and Trump took place. The network then accused Newsom of lying about the call on air.

“It is perhaps unsurprising that a near-octogenarian with a history of delusionary public statements and unhinged late-night social media screeds might confuse the dates. But Fox’s decision to cover up for President Trump’s error cannot be so easily dismissed,” the suit states.

Newsom said he gave Fox News call logs showing that the call took place the night of June 6 — June 7 in Washington, D.C., while Trump claimed they talked “a day ago” on June 10. The lawsuit states that a different Fox News host, John Roberts, first “intentionally altered” how he presented Trump’s comment about the call’s timing to “obscure President Trump’s false statement of fact.”

Watters later played an edited clip of Trump’s statement and asked, “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?”

In an email, a Fox News spokesperson said Roberts made clear the call log was from June 7th in his segment.

The suit states that the matter is “not trivial,” and “is about more than just misremembering a day or two regarding routine phone calls,” claiming that the four-day period in question “represented an unprecedented moment.”

“The President of the United States illegally commandeered the California National Guard and deployed uniformed troops onto the streets of Los Angeles over the Governor’s objections. Every hour, every Truth Social post, and every presidential utterance mattered,” the suit states. “History was occurring in real time. It is precisely why reporters asked President Trump the very question that prompted this matter: When did he last speak with Governor Newsom?”