An American based election technology company has filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, alleging that the right-wing media house perpetuated false claims against the recently concluded US elections and by extension, the company itself.
The company, Smartmatic, in a lawsuit filed on Thursday, also lists Fox on air personalities Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, as well as Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell as defendants. “In November and December 2020, Fox News broadcast multiple reports stating and implying that Smartmatic had fixed and rigged the 2020 election,” the company said in a press release. “They repeated the false claims and accusations on air and in articles and social media postings that were together seen by millions in the US and even more around the world.”
The 285-paged lawsuit seeks compensation, citing damage from what Smartmatic calls a “disinformation campaign” as Powell and Giuliani became the chief promoters of the baseless conspiracy theory that Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, a rival election-technology company, rigged the 2020 presidential election.
Powell and Giuliani alleged that a convoluted series of secret deals and technological innovations had allowed the companies to secretly switch votes from Trump to Joe Biden. Powell used the theory as a basis for a series of ultimately failed lawsuits in federal court seeking to overturn the election result.
Fox Fires Back
Responding to the lawsuit, representatives for FOX have asked for the case to be thrown out as it attempts to undermine the country’s First Amendment.
“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that Fox cannot be held liable for fairly reporting and commenting on competing allegations in a hotly contested and actively litigated election,” Fox News Media said in a statement. “We are proud of our election coverage which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism.”
Speaking further, attorneys for Fox News also asked for the suit to be thrown out, since it failed to directly implicate the network itself, showing that it acted with malice. “For a defamation case to succeed, a plaintiff must show that false, defaming statements were said with actual malice, meaning the comments were said “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not,” the statement read.
While President Joe Biden has been sworn in, issues surrounding the November 4th presidential US elections and its aftermath continue to fuel conversations around Trump’s allegations of rigging and electoral fraud.
