Tucker Carlson may be getting ready for a lawsuit against his former employer.
According to Axios, Carlson’s lawyers sent a letter to Fox News accusing them of a breach of contract:
Here’s more via Axios:
Tucker Carlson, two weeks after being ousted by Fox News, accused the network Tuesday of fraud and breach of contract — and made a host of document demands that could precede legal action.
The aggressive letter from his lawyers to Fox positions Carlson to argue that the noncompete provision in his contract is no longer valid — freeing him to launch his own competing show or media enterprise.
The Twitter move would seem to technically violate Carlson’s contract with Fox, but his lawyers’ letter effectively holds that Fox breached the contract first.
Sources told Axios that Carlson’s lawyers sent their letter before he took to Twitter to announce his new show.
Axios reported Sunday that Carlson, frustrated by being held to his contract, is preparing to unleash allies to pressure the network into letting him work for — or start — a right-wing rival.
Carlson’s contract runs until January 2025 and Fox wants to keep paying him, which would prevent him from starting a competing show.
Carlson already has gotten eye-popping offers from several right-wing outlets, and has talked to Elon Musk about working together.
The letter — from Carlson lawyer Bryan Freedman to Fox officials Viet Dinh and Irena Briganti — said Fox employees, including “Rupert Murdoch himself,” broke promises to Carlson “intentionally and with reckless disregard for the truth.”
The lawyers accuse Fox executives — which two sources say are Dinh and Murdoch — of making “material representations,” or promises, to Carlson that were intentionally broken, constituting fraud.
Notably, the letter alleges Fox broke an agreement with Carlson not to leak his private communications to the media and not to use Carlson’s private messages “to take any adverse employment action against him.”
Multiple outlets have reported on Carlson’s redacted communications from pre-trial discovery documents and have suggested that they led to his ousting.
Fox broke promises not to settle with Dominion Voting Systems “in a way which would indicate wrongdoing” on the part of Carlson and not to take any actions in a settlement that would harm Carlson’s reputation.
Carlson was told by a member of the Fox board that he was taken off the air as part of the Dominion settlement, two sources briefed on a conversation told Axios.
According to a source familiar with Carlson’s position, his lawyers believe that the misrepresentations alleged by Carlson amount to a breach of contract because they created additional terms of Carlson’s employment that were then broken by the company.
There is no lawsuit yet, but it looks like that’s where all of this is headed. In the meantime, it may be that Carlson forgoes the remaining salary that Fox News owes him in order to get out of his contract to pursue this new show.