LOS ANGELES – California Governor Gavin Newsom filed a $787 million defamation lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, accusing the network of knowingly spreading falsehoods about a phone call he had with President Donald Trump earlier this month.

The suit, filed in Delaware Superior Court—where Fox News is incorporated—centers on comments made by host Jesse Watters, who claimed Newsom lied about the nature of the call. Newsom alleges the network deliberately misrepresented the interaction to benefit Trump and damage his own credibility amid an ongoing political feud over immigration enforcement and the deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles.

“No more lies,” Newsom posted on social media, announcing the legal action. He further told Politico: “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.”

The damages sought mirror the $787.5 million Fox Corp. agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems in April 2023 to settle similar defamation claims.

Fox News has not yet responded to requests for comment.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued Fox News on Friday, accusing the network of lying about his phone call with Donald Trump amid the Los Angeles anti-ICE protests. (AP)

Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, accusing the conservative cable giant of defaming him with its coverage of his phone call with President Donald Trump earlier this month amid the Los Angeles protests over the president’s immigration crackdown and mobilization of the National Guard.

The California governor is seeking at least $787 million in damages and a court order prohibiting the network from airing any additional segments that falsely claim that he lied about the call with the president, which took place on June 7. The punitive damages sought by Newsom are nearly identical to the amount that Fox paid to Dominion Voting Systems in 2023 to settle a defamation suit over election conspiracies broadcast by the network.

“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. “Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”

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The Independent has reached out to Fox News for comment.

The Democratic governor, meanwhile, appears to be taking a page out of Trump’s playbook with his legal complaint against the MAGA cable news channel. The president is currently suing CBS News for $20 billion over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, which is increasingly looking like it will be settled despite its lack of merit as the network’s parent company Paramount looks to complete a media merger that requires the Trump administration’s approval.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued Fox News on Friday, accusing the network of lying about his phone call with Donald Trump amid the Los Angeles anti-ICE protests. (AP)

Trump, who has seen other news organizations settle with him in recent months, also recently threatened to sue CNN and The New York Times over their reports on an early intelligence assessment that indicates the US military strikes on Iran may have only set back the Middle Eastern country’s nuclear program a few months.

This is a breaking story…

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is suing Fox News for defamation, alleging that the news outlet intentionally manipulated a video to give the appearance that the governor lied about a phone call with President Donald Trump.

The governor’s demand for $787 million in punitive damages escalates his aggressive effort to challenge misinformation. The lawsuit, announced Friday, places Newsom at the forefront of the political proxy war between Democrats and Republicans over the press by challenging an outlet that many in his party despise.

“By disregarding basic journalistic ethics in favor of malicious propaganda, Fox continues to play a major role in the further erosion of the bedrock principles of informed representative government,” the suit states.

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The lawsuit stems from comments Trump made about a phone call with Newsom as tensions heated up between the two leaders over immigration raids and the president’s decision to deploy the National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles.

Trump told reporters on June 10 that he spoke with Newsom “a day ago.”

“Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job,” Trump said. “Causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death.”

Newsom immediately refuted Trump’s timeline on social media.

The governor had already spoken publicly about talking to Trump on the phone late in the night on June 6 in California, which was early June 7 for Trump on the East Coast. Newsom said the National Guard was never discussed during that call.

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“There was no call,” Newsom posted on X. “Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a President deploying Marines onto our streets doesn’t even know who he’s talking to.”

Newsom’s lawyers allege in the complaint that by making the call seem more recent, Trump could suggest they discussed the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, which they had not.

Trump attempted to fire back at Newsom through Fox and shared a screenshot of his call log with anchor John Roberts. The log showed that a phone call occurred on June 7 and provided no evidence of a call on June 9 as Trump claimed.

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“It is impossible to know for certain whether President Trump’s distortion was intentionally deceptive or merely a result of his poor cognitive state, but Fox’s decision to cover up for the President’s false statement cannot be so easily dismissed,” the complaint states.

Newsom’s legal team said Roberts initially misrepresented the situation to viewers. Then during an evening broadcast on June 10 Watters showed a video of Trump’s comments about the phone call but omitted the president saying that it happened “a day ago.” The edit made it appear that Newsom alleged the two never spoke at all.

“Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” Watters then asked.

Fox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Newsom is particularly sensitive to his critics on Fox, a conservative television network that he describes as the epicenter of a right-wing media ecosystem that misleads the public to benefit President Trump and his allies.

The amount of the governor’s request for damages was a subtle dig at the outlet.

Fox agreed two years ago to pay Dominion Voting Systems a $787 million settlement to drop a lawsuit against the network’s false claims that voting machines were manipulated to help President Biden win the 2020 election.

In a letter to Fox, Newsom’s lawyers said they will voluntarily dismiss the suit if the outlet retracts their claims that he lied about speaking to Trump.

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“We expect that you will give the same airtime in retracting these falsehoods as you spent presenting and amplifying them,” his lawyers stated. “Further, Mr. Watters and Fox News must issue a formal on-air apology for the lie you have spread about Governor Newsom.”