Rupert Murdoch predicted there would be “riots like never before” on the streets of America if the 2020 election results were overturned in favour of Donald Trump, even as his Fox News TV channel continued to air false claims about voter fraud, court filings in a landmark defamation case revealed.

In a November 19 2020 email exchange about two weeks after the election with entrepreneur Saad Mohseni, Murdoch said that “state legislators changing [results] sounds ridiculous” before predicting public unrest if that course of action was followed. He added that the “real danger is what [Trump] might do as president. Apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls!”

The correspondence is part of a large number of communications, testimony and other evidence unsealed on Tuesday in a defamation lawsuit against Murdoch’s Fox News and its parent, Fox Corp, brought by Dominion, a voting machine maker, that alleges it was falsely accused of rigging the 2020 vote on Fox programmes. Dominion is seeking $1.6bn in damages in the case, which is set to go to trial in Delaware in April.