Days after Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement, Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer in the Georgia Secretary of State's office, told Scripps News he has confidence in Dominion's voting machines.
"We have a 10-year contract with them; they are an excellent system and we plan to continue using them," he said Friday on Scripps News' "Morning Rush."
Dominion said Fox News made false claims about the accuracy of its machines.
In its official statement, Fox acknowledged the court's rulings "finding certain claims about Dominion to be false."
"Like we saw in the Dominion settlement, you don't pay $800 million if you were right," Sterling told Scripps News about the settlement.
Sterling himself was the target of a number of threats following the 2020 presidential election. In late 2020, Sterling made an impassioned plea to then-President Donald Trump to stop making claims the election was "stolen."
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The Fox News host said in a conversation he thought was private, on Jan. 4, 2021, that "there really isn't an upside to Trump."
Sterling said in 2020 that Trump had the right to contest the election in court, but added, "You need to step up and say ... stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to get shot. Someone's going to get killed, and it's not right."
Since then, Sterling has been among Georgia election officials who have testified on Trump's role to ask for them to change the results of the election in Georgia. Joe Biden narrowly won the state, becoming the first Democrat since 1992 to do so.
"If you are going to go after Trump, you really have to get him because if you don't, he's going to say he was exonerated," Sterling said.
Sterling said he was not on the line when Trump told his boss, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, "I just want to find 11,780 votes."
"It is a very difficult situation the president put himself in ... a good staff would never have allowed himself to be put in that position," Sterling said about the phone call.
Trump's actions surrounding the election have been part of an investigation in Georgia as a grand jury found that one or more witnesses committed perjury.
