Smartmatic Fox News Defamation Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: A New York judge is allowing a defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic against Fox News to continue.
- Why: Smartmatic claims Fox News promoted a false narrative against the voting systems company in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
- Where: The lawsuit was filed in New York Supreme Court.
A New York judge sided with Smartmatic last week by ruling that its $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News can continue.
Defamation claims against certain individual plaintiffs including Sidney Powell, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro were dismissed while claims against Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs were allowed to proceed, according to court documents.
Smartmatic filed the lawsuit against Fox News last year, accusing the network of promoting a false narrative that the voting systems company had worked to rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump.
The company has also filed a lawsuit against other right-wing media outlets that promoted the false theory, including One America News Network and Newsmax, The New York Times reports.
The judge overseeing the case, Justice David B. Cohen of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, ruled Fox News had “turned a blind eye” at a minimum to the “outrageous claims” made against Smartmatic and other voting systems companies.
“Even assuming that Fox News did not intentionally allow this false narrative to be broadcasted, there is a substantial basis for plaintiffs’ claim that, at a minimum, Fox News turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims about plaintiffs, unprecedented in the history of American elections, so inherently improbable that it evinced a reckless disregard for the truth,” Cohen wrote in his opinion.
Smartmatic’s defamation claims against Giuliani were mostly dismissed after the judge cited a legal technicality, however he ruled the voting systems company could try again and did allow a portion of the claims to proceed.
Defamation claims against Pirro, meanwhile, were dismissed due to the fact that, while she did say that votes had been stolen by democrats, she did not specifically blame Smartmatic, the judge determined.
Fox News Says It Will Appeal Decision, File Countersuit
Fox News has said it will appeal the decision to allow the defamation lawsuit to go forward, arguing in a statement that the claims are “baseless” and that it would be filing a countersuit.
“While we are gratified that Judge Cohen dismissed Smartmatic’s claims against Jeanine Pirro at this early stage, we still plan to appeal the ruling immediately,” Fox News said in a statement. “We will also continue to litigate these baseless claims by filing a counterclaim for fees and costs under New York’s anti-SLAPP statute to prevent the full-blown assault on the First Amendment which stands in stark contrast to the highest tradition of American journalism.”
In addition to Smartmatic’s lawsuit, Fox News is also in the midst of fighting a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against it by Dominion Voting Systems, The New York Times reports.
Dominion claims in its lawsuit that Fox News promoted falsities that damaged the company’s reputation and hurt its business.
Also last week, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell announced to a crowd in Arizona that he would be filing a class action lawsuit against “all machines” over what he claims was a rigged 2020 presidential election.
Do you believe Fox News intentionally spread disinformation about Smartmatic? Let us know in the comments!
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One thought on Fox News Smartmatic Defamation Lawsuit to Proceed, Judge Rules
This defamation lawsuit will fail.
Forensic evidence, data analysts, and computer scientists have proved that Smartmatic and Dominion machines routed and manipulated vote numbers in swing states to put Joe ahead.