Fox News accuses Tucker Carlson of breaching contract with new Twitter show

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Fox News accused Tucker Carlson of breaching his contract with the cable news network by airing an episode of his new show Tuesday on Twitter.

Carlson, once Fox’s top star and the most watched person in cable news, left the network in April amid the fallout of the channel’s $787m defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.

In a letter obtained by Axios, the network said it “reserves all rights and remedies which are available to it at law or equity” to resolve the alleged breach, which could potentially include litigation.

Carlson’s lawyers told the outlet they disagree with Fox’s claims.

“Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds,” attorney Bryan Freedman said in a statement. “Now they want to take Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events.”

The anchor, meanwhile, has accused the network of breaching their deal in May, arguing Fox leaked his private communications and settled with Dominion in a way that harmed his reputation and future business prospects.

Fox denied these allegations.

The despute around the contract will determine the fate of the reportedly $25m spent by Fox to buy out the rest of the anchor’s contract and prevent him from working for a rival network until 2024.

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, has said Carlson moving to the social network is not a paid deal, and that the former Fox host will operate like any other independent creator on the site.

In the first episode of Carlson’s new show on Twitter, he described Ukraine’s Jewish leader as “rat-like”, questioned the official story about 9/11, and claimed definitively that aliens are visiting Earth.

The far-right former Fox News anchor opened the next act of his career with a pro-Kremlin rant claiming that it was “obvious” Ukrainian forces were responsible for the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on Tuesday.

Io Dodds contributed reporting to this story.