Individuals on staff at the conservative media outlet Newsmax will have to provide personal communications for review amid a defamation case from the election technology company Dominion Voting Systems, a judge has ruled. Newsmax, which was sued for its alleged role in promoting false claims of fraud after the 2020 presidential election, had been contesting the demand, pointing to success in getting out of a similar push in litigation from Smartmatic, another election technology company.
Both Dominion and Smartmatic were named in debunked conspiracy theories related to the election.
The private communications that Dominion will be accessing under the terms of this decision from Judge Eric M. Davis could help the company with making showings possibly similar to what they found in their now concluded case against Fox — namely, that individuals involved in pushing deception knew the election claims were false or were substantially aware of the likelihood of their falsity.
Targeted, NBC said, were “employees’ private communications on personal devices.” Davis “ruled on Dec. 1 that the company did in fact have to comply with a court order requiring such materials,” the outlet added. The media company had been proposing the option of covered staff members instead providing materials on a voluntary basis, which one could obviously imagine would have left room for human error — or willful exclusion — affecting Dominion’s access. NBC did not provide a specific list of individuals whose communications are covered by the demand the records be produced. In their lawsuit, Dominion seeks massive financial penalties reaching $1.6 billion.
The company, where employees have faced even threats to their safety amid the spread of lies related to the 2020 election, already secured a settlement of over three-quarters of a billion dollars in their Fox case. Fox, meanwhile, is still facing its own case from Smartmatic, with reports recently saying longtime conservative media figurehead Rupert Murdoch was getting deposed in that case. He’d also been deposed in the Dominion case against the company, pushing back on election fraud claims during discussions.
