The Price of Falsehood: Fox News Settled, But the Architects of the 'Big Lie' Face Their Reckoning

The Unfinished Business of 2020

The ink on the Dominion Voting Systems settlement may have dried years ago—a historic $787.5 million corporate concession that effectively priced the cost of broadcasting disinformation—but for the individual architects of the so-called 'Big Lie,' the ledger remains open and deeply in the red. While the corporate giants of cable news absorbed the financial blow as a bruising but survivable operational expense—a line item in a quarterly report—the individual actors who spun the intricate web of election fraud conspiracy theories are finding that the price of falsehood is absolute personal ruin.

We are witnessing a slow-motion demolition of careers and fortunes that serves as a grim epilogue to the chaotic post-2020 era, a reminder that while corporations can settle, individuals must often pay with their legacies.

In the years since the 2020 election, the legal system has methodically dismantled the ecosystem of 'kraken' lawsuits and press conference conspiracies. The most vivid example remains Rudy Giuliani, once dubbed 'America's Mayor,' whose descent from the pinnacle of legal prestige to the nadir of bankruptcy court has been both public and precipitous. By early 2026, the cumulative weight of defamation judgments—most notably the staggering $148 million verdict awarded to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss—has stripped Giuliani of not just his wealth, but the trappings of his identity. The liquidation of his assets, from his Manhattan apartment to personal mementos, signifies a total forfeiture of the life he built. It is a harsh arithmetic: the First Amendment provides robust protection for political speech, but it offers no shelter for verifiable defamation that destroys the lives of private citizens.

Sidney Powell, too, faces a reckoning that transcends mere financial penalty. The 'Kraken' she promised to release eventually turned inward, constricting her own legal standing. Following her guilty plea in the Georgia election interference case, the subsequent civil battles have eroded her remaining defenses. Unlike Fox News, which could pivot its programming and reassure shareholders, Powell and her cohorts lack the institutional armor to weather the storm. They are fighting a multifront war against bar associations seeking disbarment, creditors seeking repayment, and a history book that is currently being written with an unforgiving pen. This disparity between the corporate and individual experience of accountability highlights a critical nuance in American justice: the deep pockets of a media empire can cushion a fall, but for the individual partisan, the ground is hard and unforgiving.

The broader implication for the American political landscape is a newfound, albeit reluctant, caution among political operatives. The 'Giuliani Standard'—a cautionary tale of total reputational and financial collapse—now hangs over Washington law firms and political consultancies. We are seeing a measurable shift in how legal challenges to election results are framed; the bombastic, fact-free assertions of 2020 have largely been replaced by more cautious, procedurally focused litigation. The cost of 'zealous representation' has been recalibrated; it no longer covers the fabrication of reality.

This 'unfinished business' is not merely about collecting debts; it is about establishing the market rate for truth in the public square. As these legal sagas conclude, they leave behind a scarred landscape where the distinction between political spin and actionable defamation has been clearly adjudicated. The courtroom, often criticized for its slowness, has proven to be the only venue capable of imposing a tangible cost on the manufacturing of alternative realities. While the political polarization of the country remains acute, the legal guardrails have arguably held, reinforced by the financial devastation of those who tested their strength.

The tragedy for these figures is not just in the loss of millions, but in the finality of the verdict. There is no appeal court for history. As they navigate the procedural humiliating of bankruptcy trustees and judgment collections, they serve as living monuments to a failed insurrection of the truth. The 2020 election may be long over, but for its most aggressive litigants, the bill has finally come due, and it is a debt that will likely take the rest of their lives to service. The message to the next generation of political warriors is stark: you may serve a cause, but you are personally liable for the weapons you choose to deploy.

Origins of the Myth: Anatomy of the 'Kraken'

In the fevered, chaotic weeks following the November 2020 presidential election, a new lexicon of conspiracy entered the American political vernacular, centered around a mythical sea monster. When attorney Sidney Powell famously declared she would 'release the Kraken,' she wasn't just using hyperbole; she was signaling the launch of a multi-front legal and public relations offensive that would fundamentally alter the landscape of American democracy. This period marks the genesis of the 'Big Lie' in its most actionable form—not just as a grievance of loss, but as a constructed alternative reality built on pseudo-technical affidavits, misinterpreted data logs, and a narrative of international intrigue so vast it allegedly involved long-deceased Venezuelan leaders and secret server farms in Germany.

The 'Kraken' lawsuits, filed in battleground states like Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, were ostensibly designed to overturn the election results. However, a retrospective analysis suggests their primary function was not legal victory—most were dismissed with prejudice, often within hours of review due to glaring procedural defects and a lack of evidentiary support—but rather the manufacturing of doubt. For the architects of this strategy, particularly Powell and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the courtroom was merely a stage for a much larger theater of public opinion. They leveraged the solemnity of legal filings to give a veneer of credibility to claims that, had they been made solely on cable news, might have evaporated sooner. By entering these allegations into the court record, they created 'evidence' that could be cited in the echo chambers of social media and partisan news outlets, creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop of disinformation.

The narrative woven by Powell and Giuliani was intricate and, to the uninitiated, terrifying. It posited that Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic—competitors in the election technology space—had conspired to flip votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden using 'DNA-level' code manipulation. This theory, devoid of technical merit and repeatedly debunked by cybersecurity experts and hand-count audits, became the bedrock of the 'Stop the Steal' movement. The specific allegations ranged from the fantastical (algorithms weighted to favor Democrats) to the mundane but false (ballot stuffing caught on video). What made the 'Kraken' mythos so resilient was its complexity; it required a suspension of disbelief that only extreme partisanship could sustain. Yet, millions of Americans, primed by months of warnings about election integrity, bought in. The cost of this belief was not just social cohesion but the security of the election workers and company executives named in these conspiracy theories, many of whom faced years of harassment and death threats.

The shift from political rhetoric to legal liability began almost immediately, though the wheels of justice turned slowly. While Fox News eventually settled with Dominion for a historic $787.5 million—an acknowledgement of the corporate cost of amplifying these falsehoods—the individual architects faced a different kind of reckoning. The defamation lawsuits filed against Powell and Giuliani personally sought billions in damages, arguing that they were not merely zealous advocates for a client but active participants in a defamation campaign that destroyed reputations and businesses. Unlike a media corporation that can absorb a financial hit as a cost of doing business, these individuals faced total financial ruin. The 'Kraken,' intended to devour the legitimacy of the Biden presidency, instead turned inward, consuming the careers and fortunes of its creators.

Furthermore, the legal fallout extended beyond defamation. Disciplinary bodies in multiple states moved to sanction or disbar the attorneys involved. The courts began to view the 'Kraken' filings not as protected advocacy but as an abuse of the judicial process. In Michigan, a federal judge ordered Powell, L. Lin Wood, and others to pay the legal fees of the city of Detroit and the state, issuing a stinging rebuke that defined the lawsuits as a 'historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.' This marked a critical pivot point in American legal history: the moment when the judicial system asserted that there is a factual baseline for entry, and that using the courts to propagate a political myth carries a tangible, personal price. As we observe Giuliani's bankruptcy proceedings and the ongoing litigation against Powell in 2026, it becomes clear that the 'Kraken' was indeed released, but its most lasting victim was the professional standing of those who summoned it.

The 'Actual Malice' Battlefield

At the heart of every defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic, and targeted election workers lies the formidable legal fortress known as 'actual malice.' Established by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1964 ruling New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, this standard requires public figures to prove that a defendant not only published a false statement but did so with knowledge of its falsity or with 'reckless disregard' for the truth. For decades, this high bar served as a robust shield for journalists and political commentators, protecting robust debate—even when erroneous—from the chilling effect of litigation. However, in the post-2020 landscape, the architects of the 'Big Lie' are discovering that this shield is not impenetrable, especially when the falsehoods are manufactured with what courts are increasingly recognizing as calculated precision rather than mere negligence.

The legal battlefield has shifted dramatically since the historic Fox News settlement. While the network absorbed a $787.5 million blow as a cost of doing business—a staggering sum, yet one that allowed them to avoid a televised confession of guilt—individuals like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell possess no such corporate cushion. For them, the 'actual malice' standard is not an abstract legal theory but a visceral, existential threat. The courts have systematically dismantled their defenses, peeling back the layers of 'advocacy' and 'legal posturing' to reveal the raw mechanics of disinformation. In the case of Giuliani, the $148 million judgment awarded to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss stands as a grim monument to this new reality. It demonstrated that when specific individuals are targeted with baseless accusations of criminality, the First Amendment does not grant immunity from the catastrophic financial consequences of those lies.

What makes the current wave of litigation against these individual actors so legally significant is the wealth of evidence demonstrating state of mind. Unlike a chaotic newsroom where responsibility can be diffused across producers, editors, and anchors, the actions of Giuliani and Powell were often solitary or conducted within a tight inner circle. Discovery processes have unearthed text messages, internal memos, and depositions that paint a damning portrait of cognizance. Prosecutors and private attorneys have successfully argued that these figures weren't merely skeptical of the election results; they were actively engineering narratives they knew to be factually bankrupt. This distinction is crucial. It moves the needle from 'political spin' to 'intentional tort,' piercing the protections usually afforded to legal counsel and political surrogates.

The Bankruptcy of Credibility

In the high-stakes poker game of political disinformation, corporations like Fox News have demonstrated that truth—or the suppression of it—has a calculable price tag. For the network, the historic settlement was a staggering operational expense, certainly, but one that was ultimately absorbable by a media titan with deep pockets and insurance policies. However, for the individual architects of the so-called 'Big Lie,' the bill has arrived, and the currency demanded is not just financial, but existential. We are witnessing the grim, slow-motion financial demolition of figures who once held the highest confidence of the American public, proving that while corporations may settle, individuals crumble.

Nowhere is this 'bankruptcy of credibility' more literal and devastating than in the fall of Rudy Giuliani. Once lionized as 'America's Mayor' for his leadership during 9/11, Giuliani has become the tragic face of the personal cost of the 2020 election subversion efforts. The defining blow came not from a massive voting machine conglomerate, but from two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The $148 million defamation judgment awarded to them by a federal jury was more than a penalty; it was a financial death sentence. This astronomical sum, intended to punish the wanton destruction of two private citizens' reputations, stripped away the veneer of untouchability that surrounds high-level political operatives. Unlike a corporation, Giuliani could not issue a press release and move on. Instead, he was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, laying bare a financial reality that was as hollow as the conspiracy theories he peddled.

Deterrence or Martyrdom? The Future of Political Speech

The courtroom gavels have banged, the settlement checks have cleared, and the headlines have faded, yet the aftershocks of the post-2020 defamation deluge continue to fracture the bedrock of American political discourse. As we navigate 2026, the central question remains unanswered: Have the financial obliterations of figures like Rudy Giuliani and the legal entanglements of Sidney Powell served as a firewall against future disinformation, or have they merely provided the blueprints for a new kind of political martyrdom? The legal system operates on the premise of deterrence—that imposing a high enough price on falsehood will make the truth the more economical option. However, the American political marketplace has evolved into an ecosystem where victimhood is a currency often more valuable than solvency.