Former Trump attorney and adviser Sidney Powell’s false promise to “release the kraken” following the 2020 election was a bridge too far, even for those of us worried about the more likely ways the Democrats may have interfered to sway the results. I’m referring to Big Tech and the legacy media’s efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, the letter signed by 51 former intelligence community leaders discrediting Hunter Biden’s laptop as “Russian disinformation,” and the numerous irregularities that had been detailed in sworn affidavits from approximately 1,000 poll workers at battleground state vote-counting centers.

Yet Fox News personalities, including Tucker Carlson , Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Maria Bartiromo, and Lou Dobbs, who privately expressed disbelief over Powell’s claims, continued to invite her onto their shows to spout her lies.

That whole sorry episode has come back to bite Fox in the form of Dominion Voting Systems's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network. Recently unsealed depositions of top executives, including Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch, and internal communications of top hosts have put the network in an embarrassing and very precarious position.

Enemies of the most widely viewed cable news channel are flooding the airwaves with predictions of doom about the network’s future viability. And, predictably, the loudest among them are those who have played rather fast and loose with the truth themselves — and done so repeatedly.

This sanctimonious, self-serving posturing from some of the worst offenders has become untenable. A recent NPR article that sounded more like an obituary for the embattled network than hard news provides a sense of how legacy media outlets are covering the story. It began: “Fox News has endured one humiliation after another from the rolling revelations in the case brought by Dominion Voting Systems.”

It continued: “Outside legal observers say the Fox News Channel finds itself in real legal jeopardy. ... The amount and weight of evidence is perhaps without equal among other major, recent defamation cases.”

Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) appeared as a guest on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday and stunned the show’s highly partisan host, Chuck Todd, with a much-needed dose of reality. Todd asked : “What do you think Rupert Murdoch and Fox News need to do to regain some trust after what we’ve learned about this? … And are you at all concerned you can have an honest conversation with Fox viewers?”

Sununu responded: “Oh, well, I don’t think it’s just Fox. I mean, I’ll put them in there, but all of media, all of television media, and everyone has to own a little bit of the lack of trust, the lack of accountability. It’s OK to get something wrong in the news, but you’ve got to come back and own it.”

Sununu’s reply prompted Todd to qualify his question. “What about intentionally lying to viewers? … That, to me, seemed to cross a line. You can make a mistake, but that wasn’t a mistake.”

“So explain to me — look, I’m not defending anybody because I think you’re all in the same basket, I really do,” Sununu said. “But I could go to CNN when they’re going to ignore the Hunter Biden laptop story. We could talk about the virus truly coming out of the lab in Wuhan. … America is losing faith in the media.”

Todd wasn’t pleased with Sununu’s stinging remarks, but he stepped on that rake all by himself. He represents peak liberal delusion at its finest. Is he not the least bit cognizant of his and his own network’s journalistic malpractice?

For three years, every network except Fox told viewers that former President Donald Trump was an agent of Russia and that the Steele dossier was real. They lambasted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and everyone else who believed COVID-19 may have originated from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as conspiracy theorists and racists. They also suppressed and/or discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story and have spent the past two years insisting that the Capitol riot was a deadly insurrection.

Typically, long after these frauds have achieved their intended purpose, we learn that they knew they were deliberately lying to the public. And these revelations always come without fanfare. There might be a correction buried in the 25th paragraph of a New York Times article (or more likely not), and the news cycle moves on. No one is ever held accountable.

The legacy media are holding Fox to a standard they themselves have repeatedly failed to meet when they should really be considering what a loss in this case would mean for journalists everywhere.

So far, Fox has shown no signs of settling the case before the trial begins on April 17. Maybe the rest of the media should listen to the facts before passing judgment. Radical, I know.

Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner and the Western Journal . Her articles have appeared at MSN, RedState, Newsmax, the Federalist, and RealClearPolitics. Follow her on  Twitter  or  LinkedIn .