Fox News Agrees to Hand Over Thousands of Documents to Smartmatic in Defamation Lawsuit
Fox News has agreed to hand over thousands of documents to Smartmatic, a voting machine company, which is suing the network for defamation. Smartmatic alleges that Fox bears financial responsibility for airing false allegations that the company rigged the 2020 presidential election against former President Donald Trump. This case is similar to Dominion Voting Machines’ recently settled lawsuit.
Last week, Fox agreed to pay Dominion nearly $800 million to avoid a trial, although the ultimate cost to the media company is likely to be much lower. Smartmatic wants a $2.7 billion judgement, which far exceeds the $1.6 billion Dominion sought in its case.
Smartmatic has accused Fox of “slow-rolling its production” of transcripts and other materials that were created during the Dominion suit, with Smartmatic receiving only a small fraction of the over 52,000 requested documents as part of the discovery process. Smartmatic hopes that document production will bolster its case, including deposition transcripts for Fox founder Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch, as well as documents related to company executive Raj Shah and lawyer Viet Dinh.
The Dominion case revealed how Fox News, and its on-air personalities, including Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and now-fired Tucker Carlson, promoted conspiracy theories and Trump’s baseless effort to overturn the election. The network suffered an array of embarrassing revelations from emails, which showed FOX executives and personalities saying they knew the accusations were untrue, even as the falsehoods were aired on programs.
Because Smartmatic machines were only used in Los Angeles during the 2020 election, the company had little influence on the presidential race, and Fox’s on-air personalities sometimes conflated Dominion and Smartmatic. Smartmatic’s lawyer, Erik Connolly, has stated that the Dominion case “exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest.”
No court date has been set and the case might not go to court for a couple of years.
Overall, Smartmatic’s substantial damages claim shows how serious they are in their pursuit of justice, and the discovery process will reveal even more about Fox News’ role in spreading false allegations about the 2020 presidential election.
Original Story at spectrumlocalnews.com – 2023-04-26 19:38:00
