Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during an address on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
Office of California Governor via AP
California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued Fox News on Friday, seeking damages of at least $787 million from the conservative network for allegedly defaming him in comments about a phone call with President Donald Trump.
“No more lies,” Newsom wrote in a tweet that announced his lawsuit, which was filed in Superior Court in Delaware, where Fox News is incorporated.
The amount of the damages the Democratic governor is seeking almost exactly matches what Fox Corp. Fox News, and other Fox cable networks agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems in April 2023 to settle a Delaware lawsuit alleging they defamed Dominion by falsely claiming its machines swayed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election against Trump.
Newsom’s suit is focused on comments by Fox News anchor Jesse Waters, who had said Newsom lied about not having a call with Trump on a certain day in early June.
The suit alleges that Fox News was motivated to “lie and distort on behalf of the President,” who has been engaged in a feud with the governor over the deployment of California National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
Newsom’s lawyers, in a letter Friday to Fox News, said that the governor is prepared to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit “if Fox News retracts the claim that he lied when speaking about President Trump not calling him on June 9.” The letter also demands a “formal on-air apology” from Watters and Fox News in exchange for dismissal of the suit.
“If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences — just like it did in the Dominion case,” Newsom said in a statement.
“I believe the American people should be able to trust the information they receive from a major news outlet. Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”
CNBC has requested comment from Fox News on Newsom’s lawsuit.
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