Smartmatic Files $2.75 Billion Lawsuit Against Fox, Prompting Cancellation of ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’
An inconspicuous voting technology company has filed a lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Network. The $2.75 billion defamation lawsuit targets popular news anchors Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro as well as Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and attorney Sidney Powell.
The lawsuit was filed by the technology voting firm Smartmatic in New York state's Supreme Court. Smartmatic introduces its position in the lawsuit by asserting the following facts, “The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.”
Giuliani and Powell Accused of Being Catalysts for Misinformation
Two frequent fliers on the network, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell are targeted as having created and perpetuated the lie that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen from president Trump. Smartmatic also argues that because they were frequent guests on Fox News, the anchors named in the lawsuit helped perpetuate the false narrative of election fraud.
In statements made by attorney Powell, she promotes the notion of election fraud by spreading misinformation about the background of the company. Powell has stated, “The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out.”
As explained in a fact check done by the Associated Press, the reality is Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, another voting technology firm, have no relationship with each other. Additionally, there is no evidence linking Smartmatic to Venezuela.
Powell has also made public statements that the Smartmatic software had the ability to flip votes and that votes cast for Trump were then swapped in favor of Biden. Powell and Fox News promoted this falsehood even though experts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that oversaw the security of the 2020 election publicly said there is no evidence to support votes being switched.
Even if the false notion of software swapping votes were true, Smartmatic would not have had the ability to alter election results as the technology was used only in LA county during the 2020 election.
Popular Fox News Anchors Named in Lawsuit
Smartmatic also targets the news network itself along with popular hosts who devoted significant airtime to the false narrative. Smartmatic explains that the network needed to find a scapegoat to explain Trump's loss. The lawsuit states, "defendants had an obvious problem with their story. They needed a villain. They needed someone to blame. They needed someone whom they could get others to hate. A story of good versus evil, the type that would incite an angry mob, only works if the storyteller provides the audience with someone who personifies evil.” The lawsuit goes on to state, “Without any true villain, defendants invented one. Defendants decided to make Smartmatic the villain in their story.”
Smartmatic highlights Fox News' consistent efforts to spread misinformation by pointing to 13 reports that targeted the voting firm with false narratives of voter fraud. The company argues that some of the misinformation spread by the news outlet includes inaccurate reporting that Smartmatic software was used in six states with close outcomes, even though it was only used in LA County. Other claims of misinformation include Smartmatic software being used along with Dominion Voting Systems, another voting technology firm that Smartmatic has no relationship with or ties to. The company goes on to say that Fox and its targeted hosts knew that the claims against Smartmatic were lies yet they continued to be perpetuated to the American public.
The day after Smartmatic announced its defamation lawsuit against the news network, Fox Business immediately pulled its highly rated news show Lou Dobbs Tonight off the air. Dobbs, who was a long-time supporter of President Trump, was specifically targeted in the lawsuit as he not only allowed guests to defame Smartmatic but he "took the initiative and contributed additional falsehoods to the narrative."
A spokesperson for the Fox News Network shared that Fox was proud of its coverage of the 2020 election and that it would “ vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court.”
Defamation Lawsuits May Continue to Pile
The defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News is just one of the latest lawsuits addressing the spread of misinformation about the results of the 2020 election. Smartmatic's rival company, Dominion Voting System, recently filed a lawsuit against former Trump attorneys Giuliani and Powell. Like Smartmatic, the Dominion lawsuit also alleges that Gulliani and Powell helped perpetuate the idea that Dominion played a role in the unfounded claims of voter fraud.
In a recent interview with CNN Business, a spokesman for Dominion Voting Systems, Michael Steel, highlighted his firm's efforts to stop the spread of information by going after Donald Trump supporter Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow. Lindell has famously continued to perpetuate claims of voter fraud even after conservative outlets have reeled back the narrative. Steel foreshadowed that lawsuits will continue to be filed against individuals or entities who perpetuate false claims of voter fraud. Steel shared with CNN, "Mike Lindell is begging to be sued, and at some point, we may well oblige him."
Dominion has also reiterated the reality that the company has no working relationship with Smartmatic but that the two rival companies are working toward a "shared goal" of stopping the spread of misinformation pertaining to election fraud.
