Global Courant
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fox News notified Tucker Carlson’s legal team on Wednesday that the former primetime host breached his contract with the network when he launched his own Twitter show on Tuesday, Axios reported, citing a copy from a letter obtained by the news website.
Carlson released the first episode of his new show on Twitter on Tuesday, weeks after being taken off the air by Fox following a damaging defamation lawsuit alleging false claims of election fraud.
Fox News general counsel Bernard Gugar sent a letter to Carlson’s legal team saying Carlson is “violating” his contract agreement after he posted a clip of his new show to Twitter Tuesday night, according to Axios.
Carlson’s legal team was not immediately available for comment by Reuters. His attorney told Axios that any legal action by Fox would violate his right to free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
“Fox is defending its existence on freedom of speech grounds. Now they want to take away Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely because he used social media to share his thoughts on current events,” said Carlson’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, in a statement. statement quoted by Axios.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The letter quoted by Axios refers to Carlson’s contract and said his former prime time star was “prohibited from providing services of any kind, whether over the Internet via streaming or similar distribution, or other digital distribution, now known or conceived in the future.'”
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Deepa Babington and Bill Berkrot)
