Voting-machine companies threaten to sue right-wing news media about their spreading claims of massive vote fraud

[lpetrich]

The ‘Red Slime’ Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing Media - The New York Times - "Voting machine companies threaten “highly dangerous” cases against Fox, Newsmax and OAN, says Floyd Abrams."

Then talking about Antonio Mugica, head of Smartmatic, heading a company that makes voting machines.

Last month, Mr. Mugica initially took it in stride when his company’s name started popping up in grief-addled Trump supporters’ wild conspiracy theories about the election.

“Of course I was surprised, but at the same time, it was pretty clear that these people were trying to discredit the election and they were throwing out 25 conspiracy theories in parallel,” he told me in an interview last week from Barbados, where his company has an office. “I thought it was so absurd that it was not going to have legs.”

But by Nov. 14, he knew he had a problem. That’s when Rudy Giuliani, serving as the president’s lawyer, suggested that one voting company, Dominion Voting Systems, had a sinister connection to vote counts in “Michigan, Arizona and Georgia and other states.” Mr. Giuliani declared on Twitter that the company “was a front for SMARTMATIC, who was really doing the computing. Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?”

Then commentators at Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News started talking about Rudy Giuliani's and Sidney Powell's conspiracy theories. Like

“Sidney Powell is out there saying that states like Texas, they turned away from Dominion machines, because really there’s only one reason why you buy a Dominion machine and you buy this Smartmatic software, so you can easily change votes,” the Newsmax host Chris Salcedo said in one typical mash-up on Nov. 18. Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business reported on Nov. 15 that “one source says that the key point to understand is that the Smartmatic system has a backdoor.”

But Smartmatic wasn't even in most US elections. It pulled out in 2007 after a controversy over its founders' Venezuelan roots.

In an era of brazen political lies, Mr. Mugica has emerged as an unlikely figure with the power to put the genie back in the bottle. Last week, his lawyer sent scathing letters to the Fox News Channel, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name — and that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit. He has, legal experts say, an unusually strong case. And his new lawyer is J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, at least $177 million, for a beef producer whose “lean finely textured beef” was described by ABC News as “pink slime.”

This lawyer is now taking on what the NYT article called "red slime".

“We’ve gotten to this point where there’s so much falsity that is being spread on certain platforms, and you may need an occasion where you send a message, and that’s what punitive damages can do in a case like this,” Mr. Connolly said.

Mr. Mugica isn’t the only potential plaintiff. Dominion Voting Systems has hired another high-powered libel lawyer, Tom Clare, who has threatened legal action against Ms. Powell and the Trump campaign. Mr. Clare said in an emailed statement that “we are moving forward on the basis that she will not retract those false statements and that it will be necessary for Dominion to take aggressive legal action, both against Ms. Powell and the many others who have enabled and amplified her campaign of defamation by spreading damaging falsehoods about Dominion.”

 

[lpetrich]

The letters written by lawyers for Smartmatic and Dominion are “extremely powerful,” said Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s most prominent First Amendment lawyers, in an email to The New York Times. “The repeated accusations against both companies are plainly defamatory and surely have done enormous reputational and financial harm to both.”

Mr. Abrams noted that “truth is always a defense” and that, failing that, the networks may defend themselves by saying they didn’t know the charges were false, while Ms. Powell may say she was simply describing legal filings.

Defamation is the general term for libel and slander. Libel is traditionally written defamation and slander spoken defamation, though electronic media have blurred the distinction between the two. Where does text chat fall? Audio and video recordings?

 

[lpetrich]

Newsmax And Pro-Trump Media Walk Back Voting Conspiracies After Legal Threat | HuffPost

In a nearly two-minute statement that is being read on all Newsmax shows, the channel is essentially walking back its own groundless claims that electronic voting system companies Smartmatic and Dominion were involved in some kind of nefarious attempt to steal the election.

“There are several facts our viewers and readers should be aware,” host John Tabacco said on Monday, before debunking a long list of conspiratorial claims.

“Neither Dominion nor Smartmatic has any relationship with George Soros. Smartmatic is a U.S. company and not owned by the Venezuelan government, Hugo Chavez or any foreign official or entity. Smartmatic states it has no operations in Venezuela,” he continued.

The article said about it that it "has the tone of a rote legal statement".

On Friday, top-rated Fox Business host Lou Dobbs ran a pretaped segment with election security expert Eddie Perez debunking various claims related to Smartmatic and Dominion. Fox News host Jeanine Pirro’s show aired the same clip on Saturday, featuring Perez stating he has seen no evidence of any election fraud related to Smartmatic.

...
One outlet that reportedly received a letter from Smartmatic but has not issued a public retraction or clarification yet is One America News Network, a far-right and sycophantically pro-Trump network that has aired similar reports to those on Newsmax and Fox News featuring conspiracies about electronic voting.

The election-fraud conspiracy-mongering started before the election.

Even before the election, Trump and his allies in far-right media were also priming audiences for their claims of election fraud related to voting machines. In late October, “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade falsely suggested that viewers should be concerned over “voting machines that George Soros owns.”

George Soros. I think that he is made a big villain out of projections. Many right-wingers may be familiar with the oligarchs who fund them, oligarchs like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, the Mercer family, etc. So they project that onto their targets and they thus imagine that George Soros is the liberal Charles Koch.

 

[lpetrich]

Justin Amash on Twitter: "The election fraud hoax will go down as one of the most embarrassing and dishonorable episodes in American political history, and countless Republican officials went along with it and promoted it." / Twitter

 

[Elixir]

This should put a stop to the lies coming from FOX, OANN, NewsMax et al. For about ten seconds as they say "oh sorry, that was wrong - we didn't know".
Then on to the next pack of lies and conspiracy theories.

 

[lpetrich]

Dominion Voting Systems machine company executive sues Trump allies for defamation - CNNPolitics

The lawsuit names as defendants the Trump campaign, Rudy Giuliani, Trump adviser Sidney Powell, conservative media outlets One America News Network and Newsmax Media, the right-wing website Gateway Pundit, and Colorado businessman and activist Joseph Oltmann, among others.

...
In recent days -- as the threat of legal action loomed larger -- several conservative media outlets have begun backtracking some of the more outrageous claims.

Dominion Voting Systems Employee Sues Trump Campaign And Allies, Alleging Defamation : NPR

Eric Coomer, director of product strategy and security for the Denver-based company, has been baselessly accused of using his position to mastermind a high-tech plot to steal the election for President-elect Joe Biden. Biden's victory has been certified in the states by officials of both parties with no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities.

Coomer's suit, filed Tuesday in Colorado state district court in Denver, accuses those responsible of spreading the falsehoods of intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy.

The lawsuit says the claims made about Coomer have led to death threats, constant harassment and "untold damage to his reputation as a national expert on voting systems." Coomer was forced to leave his home one week after the presidential election ended and move to a safe undisclosed location where he remains.

Including right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin.

Dominion worker sues Trump campaign and conservative media - POLITICO

His lawyers said Coomer has become “the face of the false claims.” Coomer’s name first got public exposure in a podcast by Oltmann, who claimed to have heard a strategy call of Antifa activists. When the prospect of a Trump victory was brought up, Oltmann said a man identified as “Eric from Dominion” supposedly said “don’t worry about the election, Trump is not going to win. I made ... sure of that,” adding an expletive.

In an opinion piece written for the Denver Post, Coomer wrote that he has no connections to Antifa, was never on any call and the idea that there is some recording of him is “wholly fabricated.”

 

[lpetrich]

I tried to track down that lawsuit, and I found
Dominon's Dr. Eric Coomer Files Lawsuit Against President, Surrogates about False Election Fraud Claims - by Jan Wondra - Ark Valley Voice

AVV’s fellow CoLab member NBC (9News) investigative reporter Marshall Zelinger, picked up the story this afternoon, and identified the lawsuit filed around 2 p.m. MST this afternoon in the 2nd Judicial District Court.

That led me to a website's login page, so I went to that court's home page: Colorado Judicial Branch - 2nd Judicial District - Homepage
I couldn't find anything there about this lawsuit.

 

[lpetrich]

Fox News, suddenly worried about a defamation suit, forced to debunk its own false election claims | Salon.com

Fox News and Newsmax have issued debunkings of their voting-machine fraud claims, but I have yet to find anything about OAN.

PolitiFact | How Fox News, Newsmax vote-rigging coverage squares with defamation law

• Fox News and Newsmax are vulnerable to a threatened defamation lawsuit by the voting system company Smartmatic, experts say.
• The news organizations might claim they simply shared views held by others, but legal doctrines say they still could be held responsible.
• Legal experts say lawsuits can be a useful tool against misinformation, but take a lot of time and are expensive.

 

[Rhea]

I hope hey take this suit as far as they can go. I hope the ruling helps to teach these people that lies are not profitable. I hope it makes them pause and consider their pocketbooks before they air more destructive lies. I hope more people who are damaged by these lies rise up and sue as well. I would love for the lying rotten core of this midset to be bankrupted as completely in the pocketbook as they are already in their morals.

 

[lpetrich]

Dominion worker sues Trump campaign, conservative media - Axios
noting
Complaint-20201222-Eric-Coomer-Suit - DocumentCloud

Plaintiff Eric Coomer, Ph.D. (Dr.Coomer), by and through undersigned counsel, brings this action against Defendants Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., Sidney Powell, Sidney Powell, P.C., Rudolph Giuliani, Joseph Oltmann, FEC United, Shuffling Madness Media, Inc. dba Conservative Daily, James Hoft, TGP Communications LLC dba The Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin, Eric Metaxas, Chanel Rion, Herring Networks, Inc. dba One America News Network, and Newsmax Media, Inc. (collectively, Defendants herein) in response to relentless defamation and ongoing threats.

with

Defendants knowingly circulated and amplified a baseless conspiracy theory to challenge the integrity of the presidential election. While this theory has been thoroughly rejected, its immediate and life-threatening effects remain very real. The deluge of misinformation has caused immense injury to Dr. Coomer’s reputation, professional standing, safety, and privacy. Once an esteemed private election technology expert, Dr. Coomer has been vilified and subjected to an onslaught of offensive messages and harassment. In response to multiple credible death threats, Dr.Coomer has been forced to leave his home in fear for his safety. Without concern for the truth or the consequences of their reckless conduct, Defendants branded Dr. Coomer a traitor to the United States, a terrorist, and a criminal of the highest order.

 

[barbos]

This should be easy money for these companies. A lot of easy money in fact.
Hugo Chavez is going to be rich!

 

[Worldtraveller]

I hope hey take this suit as far as they can go. I hope the ruling helps to teach these people that lies are not profitable. I hope it makes them pause and consider their pocketbooks before they air more destructive lies. I hope more people who are damaged by these lies rise up and sue as well. I would love for the lying rotten core of this midset to be bankrupted as completely in the pocketbook as they are already in their morals.

Depending on how they're written, some of these suits might be mooted by the 'retractions' at the various media organizations.

However, the individual lawsuits are going to be much more difficult to have dismissed. It will be interesting to follow these cases.

More importantly, if one is even vaguely attached to reality, it is obvious that the media stations spreading these lies knew they were lies, otherwise they would have doubled down and gone to court to fight it. The fact that they so quickly (even if rather badly) retracted the story, and have since shut down those still peddling the lies (like the pillow guy), they know how the case would turn out.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I hope hey take this suit as far as they can go. I hope the ruling helps to teach these people that lies are not profitable. I hope it makes them pause and consider their pocketbooks before they air more destructive lies. I hope more people who are damaged by these lies rise up and sue as well. I would love for the lying rotten core of this midset to be bankrupted as completely in the pocketbook as they are already in their morals.

Depending on how they're written, some of these suits might be mooted by the 'retractions' at the various media organizations.

However, the individual lawsuits are going to be much more difficult to have dismissed. It will be interesting to follow these cases.

More importantly, if one is even vaguely attached to reality, it is obvious that the media stations spreading these lies knew they were lies, otherwise they would have doubled down and gone to court to fight it. The fact that they so quickly (even if rather badly) retracted the story, and have since shut down those still peddling the lies (like the pillow guy), they know how the case would turn out.

I don't see how the retractions undo the damage.

 

[TomC]

I hope hey take this suit as far as they can go. I hope the ruling helps to teach these people that lies are not profitable. I hope it makes them pause and consider their pocketbooks before they air more destructive lies. I hope more people who are damaged by these lies rise up and sue as well. I would love for the lying rotten core of this midset to be bankrupted as completely in the pocketbook as they are already in their morals.

Depending on how they're written, some of these suits might be mooted by the 'retractions' at the various media organizations.

However, the individual lawsuits are going to be much more difficult to have dismissed. It will be interesting to follow these cases.

More importantly, if one is even vaguely attached to reality, it is obvious that the media stations spreading these lies knew they were lies, otherwise they would have doubled down and gone to court to fight it. The fact that they so quickly (even if rather badly) retracted the story, and have since shut down those still peddling the lies (like the pillow guy), they know how the case would turn out.

I don't see how the retractions undo the damage.

Exactly. They sound more like a guilty plea.

If you break in and steal from someone, giving back the stuff later doesn't make you innocent of burglary.
Tom

 

[Elixir]

This should be easy money for these companies. A lot of easy money in fact.
Hugo Chavez is going to be rich!

Excellent, Barbos.