Good morning. Welcome, Naxios today. It's Wednesday, April 19th. I'm Nailibutu. Here's

what you need to know today. An American journalist arrested in Russia makes his first court

appearance. Plus, it's the NBA playoffs. But first, today's one big thing. The Fox News

Dominion trial is over before it even started. Fox has admitted to telling lies about

Dominion that caused enormous damage to my company, our employees, and the customers

that we serve. Nothing can ever make up for that. That's Dominion CEO, John Polis, talking

about the $787.5 million settlement. Fox News reached with Dominion voting systems yesterday.

After a jury had been selected, and lawyers were waiting to make their opening statements.

Axios' Sarah Fisher joins us from Wilmington, Delaware, where she's covering the story.

Hi, Sarah. Hi, Nailibutu. This trial was said to be a landmark case on defamation. Why

do you think there was a settlement at the 11th hour? Well, I think sometimes when you get

in front of a jury, it forces both parties to really come to the table and figure out what

they want and make their final demands. I think you see with the settlement that what Dominion

was really looking for was a number. And what Fox was really looking for was having to

dodge apologies or on-air retractions, things that would have been reputationally damaging.

Now, Fox doesn't walk away totally clean. Of course, they have to pay $787 million. That's

the highest media defamation lawsuit settlement ever in history. But then also, they acknowledged

in their statement that the court found that what they had been airing about Dominion was false.

And that's key, Nailib, because this isn't the only defamation lawsuit that Fox faces.

That admission may come up in other lawsuits. Defamation lawsuits that they're facing, most notably

from Smartmatic. That lawsuit is for $2.7 billion. What does this settlement tell us about what we

can expect from Smartmatic? Smartmatic lawyers are basically saying that Dominion litigation

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