Finding that it more likely than not that the Murdochs knew full well their stories about Dominion Voting Systems were false but let them be aired anyway in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis on Tuesday tossed Fox News’s motion to dismiss the defamation lawsuit the election equipment company brought against the right wing propaganda network, Bloomberg reports. “These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion,” wrote Davis in the ruling and damn, that is ice fucking cold to the fanboys.

Davis also noted that Rupert Murdoch – also a defendant in the suit personally, along with his son Lachlan – had directly communicated to Trump that he had in fact lost, and that “newspapers under Rupert Murdoch’s control – including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post – condemned Trump’s claims and urged him to concede defeat.” In ruling that the standard for actual malice had been met (which is pretty freaking high in the United States, relative to other common law jurisdictions), Davis wrote the Murdochs “caused Fox News to broadcast false claims about Dominion even though they did not personally believe Trump’s election fraud narrative.”