Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems have agreed to a blockbuster settlement over the network’s coverage of former President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. 

The settlement comes after months of courtroom fighting between the two parties, in what had been widely seen as a precedent-setting moment for defamation law that could severely alter the financial and reputational health of the country’s largest cable news company.   

The settlement, which came just hours before opening arguments in the defamation trial were slated to begin in a Delaware courtroom, shields Fox from what was likely to have been a grueling and potentially embarrassing span of several weeks focusing on its internal strife around the time of the 2020 election. 

Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.

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