Tucker just released the first episode of his new show, “Tucker on Twitter,” and it was a massive success. He has already gotten over 105 million views and received a huge amount of support from the populist right for his strong, brave stance on the Russo-Ukrainian War and the censorship of those who speak out by their governments.
It also did far, far better than Fox News, so it and its lawyers were predictably upset and went after Tucker, Axios reports, claiming that he breached his contract with Fox News.
Axios claims to have obtained the letter sent from Fox’s lawyers to Tucker’s lawyers in which they claimed that he breached his contract, thus setting Fox up to try and take legal action against him. Axios reports that Fox News general counsel Bernard Gugar said “In connection with such breach and pursuant to the Agreement, Fox expressly reserves all rights and remedies which are available to it at law or equity.”
The letter reportedly added that Tucker’s contract “prohibited [him] from rendering services of any type whatsoever, whether ‘over the internet via streaming or similar distribution, or other digital distribution whether now known or hereafter devised.'”
Tucker’s lawyers hit back hard and described the letter and implicit threat of legal action within it as an attack on Tucker’s free speech rights, telling Axios in a statement that “Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds. Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events.”
Tucker is also already fighting back in the courts, claiming that Fox News’ firing of him both engaged in fraud and breached its contract with him when senior executives at the network broke their promises to him “intentionally and with reckless disregard for the truth.”
Further, it might not matter. According to Tucker’s biographer, Tucker’s contract with Fox News did not cover Twitter. Speaking about that, the biographer, Chadwick Moore, said, “What I understand is that Fox News didn’t have the foresight to include Twitter in their non-compete in Tucker’s contract.”
Describing why Tucker might be able to get away with using Twitter for his show regardless of his Fox non-compete, Moore then added, “But from what I understand is they failed to think that Twitter would ever be a competitor. And so he that’s convenient for him to have a show. Now, what his team has told me about that is that they’re going to test out the product. Twitter is launching a new service, I believe it’s called X video. It’s meant to compete with YouTube, and they’re gonna test it out if the product works well.”
Axios reported that Tucker’s lawyers are making a similar argument, claiming that Twitter is not directly competitive with Fox News channel and so the non-compete that Tucker signed does not cover it. It is unclear now which side will prevail, though Moore seemed confident that the non-compete did not cover Twitter.
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