By Aiyeku Timothy
A United States election technology company, Smartmatic has filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and several of the network’s most prominent commentators.
The accused presenters are alleged to have “decimated” the company’s business by falsely accusing it of helping to rig the Nov. 3 election in favour of Joe Biden.
A 285-page complaint filed was tabled on Thursday in New York state court by Florida-based Smartmatic USA which goes down in history as one of the largest libel suits ever.
Two former lawyers for Donald Trump – Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell are also accused in the suit of same offense.
Earlier on 25 January, a rival election-technology company, Dominion Voting Systems, also sued Guiliani and Powell for $1.3bn.
While Dominion’s technology was used in 24 states, Smartmatic’s participation in the 2020 election was restricted to Los Angeles county, which votes heavily Democratic.
Despite the limited role played by Smartmatic, Fox aired at least 13 reports falsely stating or implying the company had stolen the 2020 vote in cahoots with Venezuela’s socialist government, according to the complaint.
This alleged “disinformation campaign” continued even after the then attorney general, William Barr, said the Department of Justice could find no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Recall that on 10 December segment, Lou Dobbs accused Smartmatic and its CEO, Antonio Mugica, of working to flip votes through a non-existent backdoor in its voting software to carry out a “massive cyber Pearl Harbor”, the complaint alleged.
“Defendants’ story was a lie,” the complaint stated. “But, it was a story that sold.”
The complaint alleges that the Fox hosts Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro also directly benefitted from their involvement in the conspiracy.
The Defendants – Fox, Giuliani and Powell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
For Smartmatic, the effects of the negative publicity were swift and devastating, the complaint alleges.
Death threats, including against an executive’s 14-year-old son, poured in as internet searches for the company surged, Smartmatic claims.
With several client contracts in jeopardy, the company estimates that it will lose as much as $690m in profits over the next five years and expects it will have to boost spending by $4.7m to fend off what it called a “meteoric rise” in cyberattacks
Smartmatic is represented by J Erik Connolly, who previously won what is believed to be the largest settlement in American media defamation, at least $177m, for a report on ABC News describing a company’s beef product as “pink slime”.
“Very rarely do you see news organization go day after day after day the same targets,” Connolly said in an interview.
“We couldn’t possibly have rigged this election because we just weren’t even in the contested states to do the rigging.”
