Dominion Voting Systems, a voting and elections technology company that has figured prominently in pro-Trump conspiracy theories about last year’s presidential election, has now filed defamation lawsuits seeking over $1.6 billion in damages apiece from far-right media outlets including Newsmax and One America News Network. The lawsuits are over these outlets’ roles in spreading deranged lies about Dominion, which Trump and certain allies of his have falsely claimed was a key part of a non-existent scheme to somehow rig the election for Joe Biden. Dominion has already filed similar defamation lawsuits against interests like longtime Trump ally Rudy Giuliani.
The lawsuit from Dominion against Newsmax says that the network “helped create and cultivate an alternate reality where up is down, pigs have wings, and Dominion engaged in a colossal fraud to steal the presidency from Donald Trump by rigging the vote.” Meanwhile, the lawsuit targeting One America News Network also includes a couple of executives at the company and reporters Christina Bobb and Chanel Rion as defendants. Dominion filed a similar lawsuit this week against Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, who — like MyPillow founder/CEO Mike Lindell — is an ally of Trump and has promoted the former president’s false claim that the election was somehow rigged for Biden.
Newsmax insisted in response to the Dominion lawsuit that “in its coverage of the 2020 Presidential elections, Newsmax simply reported on allegations made by well-known public figures, including the President, his advisors and members of Congress,” and the company added that the Dominion lawsuit is supposedly “a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press.”
In fact, the so-called reporting that outlets like Newsmax and One America News Network undertook regarding claims about election fraud was largely not based in any kind of legitimate question. Authorities on both the federal level and in individual states around the nation have repeatedly, unequivocally confirmed that last year’s presidential election was secure, and not a single court anywhere in the country has accepted the idea that Biden’s win was the result of fraud. Claiming that there’s some sort of looming uncertainty about whether Biden’s win was legitimate is a flat-out falsehood — and as the Capitol riot, which proceeded under the inspiration of lies about the election, proved: That falsehood is destructive and dangerous.
