Dominion Voting Systems, a voting technology company, has now formally responded to a motion from longtime Trump ally Rudy Giuliani that sought to get the firm’s defamation lawsuit against him dismissed. The company expertly dismantled Giuliani’s arguments.
Dominion Voting Systems has asked a federal judge to deny Rudy Giuliani's movement to dismiss the company's $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him.https://t.co/zPBgqDdjJS
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 7, 2021
Dominion, whose tech was used in some areas of the U.S. during the 2020 presidential election cycle, was the subject of a slew of post-election conspiracy theories. Ludicrously, prominent Trump allies claimed that the company had been a part of a scheme to somehow rig the election for Biden, but no credible evidence for this claim ever emerged. The lack of meaningful evidence didn’t stop Trump himself from trumpeting the claim on Twitter at one point that Dominion had somehow “deleted” millions of his votes from around the country. Again, no credible evidence of this claim ever emerged anywhere or at any point.
After Giuliani spent months helping spread nonsensical conspiracy theories of systematic election fraud, Dominion brought a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him, seeking financial compensation to cover (among other things) the huge sums of cash that the company had to spend on security for employees after the spread of the Trump team’s delusional lies. As summarized by Fortune, Giuliani claimed in a request to get Dominion’s lawsuit dismissed that the company had not named “any harm it suffered from his public comments.” That’s just not accurate — the company outlined repeated and specific examples of harm that it had suffered.
As also summarized by Fortune, Giuliani’s request for the lawsuit’s dismissal “ignores extensive allegations that his election fraud statements caused serious financial damage to the voting machine company,” according to the Dominion response. Summarizing their argument, Dominion said as follows:
‘These are just a few exemplars of the detailed allegations plaintiffs set forth in their complaint. The losses plaintiffs have suffered as a result of Giuliani’s conduct become more specific over time and indeed have grown since the complaint was filed.’
Overall, Dominion says that the claims that Giuliani helped spread “are projected to result in lost profits of $200 million over the next five years and to upend Dominion’s business in states that are now balking at using its machines,” Fortune adds. The company also says that the widespread lies about its supposed role in an imaginary election rigging scheme “destroyed” its resale value.
Besides these legal troubles for Giuliani, he is also continuing to face a federal criminal investigation into whether he conducted illegal lobbying in the U.S. on behalf of foreign interests. In short, Giuliani is suspected of possibly covertly carrying the interests of certain Ukrainians to Trump when he pressured the then-president to fire Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. Trump eventually fired Yovanovitch.
