(NEW YORK) — Years after the 2020 election and in the wake of a landmark $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, Fox News is continuing to fight back against a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit brought by voting machine company Smartmatic.
Fox wrote a clear message in a new court filing on Wednesday: “Smartmatic is not Dominion.”
“Unlike Dominion, Smartmatic was mired in a decade of business failure due to inadequate technology, missing certifications, and involvement in multiple highly controversial elections,” the filing states. “Unlike Dominion, Smartmatic was founded by Venezuelans and was embroiled in claims of fraud in Venezuelan and Filipino elections well before any controversy arose over the 2020 Presidential Election.”
The filing from attorneys representing Fox Corp, Fox News, and some talent on Wednesday came in support of the motion for summary judgment, in which their attorneys urged the court that Smartmatic’s suit is nothing more than a “meritless cash grab” from what they say is “failing company.”
In its 12-page filing, Fox laid out a litany of what it said were Smartmatic’s “ongoing reputational problems” in an effort to give credit to some of the claims made on its air about the company in the wake of the 2020 election. They say that “none of it was defamatory.”
“In the wake of the hotly contested 2020 Presidential Election, Fox News hosts fairly and accurately reported on remarkable and newsworthy allegations that the President and his lawyers were making about election integrity during the short interval between Election Day and the date the results were certified, while court challenges were playing out around the country,” the filing from the network said.
In its own filing on Wednesday, Smartmatic claimed that Fox News “deliberately deceived its audience” when it reported claims of fraud surrounding Smartmatic after the 2020 election — and claimed that the top officials at the company, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, “knew President Trump lost the 2020 election” and “mocked” him in private.
“That is what they knew, said, and did behind closed doors,” a filing in support of Smartmatic’s motion for summary judgment claimed. “In public, Fox News told its audience the opposite.”
In a statement, Smartmatic’s attorney Erik Connolly said, “Fox is running the same playbook as other abusers, trying to sully the victim.”
“Fox cannot justify its month-long smear campaign against Smartmatic. Everyone from the Murdochs to the show producers knew they were pushing baseless claims,” Connolly said. “So, Fox is piling new lies on top of its old ones to try to persuade shareholders that its financial exposure is less than the $780 million paid to Dominion. It is not. It is much more. Fox will be held accountable. Fox’s motion is a distraction, not a defense.”
The filing from Smartmatic says Fox “from top to bottom” knew “with absolute certainty” that Smartmatic did not rig the 2020 election, but that they “systematically promoted the inflammatory and false narrative” anyway.
“The Murdochs and their executives believed this was a story that President Trump’s supporters wanted to hear, so that is what Fox News told them even though no one believed it to be true,” the filing states.
Smartmatic labeled Fox News as having done a “pivot”– in which they remained in “neutral ground” on the 2020 election until they decided to “lean into election fraud claims” after it faced backlash for calling Arizona for Joe Biden.
“Fox News’ ‘pivot’ was designed to boost ratings, which it did. Good for Fox. It devastated Smartmatic,” the voting machine company’s filing says.
Smartmatic’s filing includes some threats it says it received in the wake of the election. The company claims that its “prospects and reputation have been destroyed.” Smartmatic claims they are now “fighting to survive,” suffering billions in value that “have forever been lost” and that over 100 employees have lost their jobs.
The motions for summary judgement from both sides remained redacted until further notice.
Smartmatic sued Fox and other defendants in 2021, claiming they “knowingly and intentionally” lied about them in the wake of the 2020 election regarding claims of fraud, causing them to lose business.
Instead, Fox claims that Smartmatic “saw a litigation lottery ticket in Fox News’s coverage of the 2020 election.”
“Smartmatic seized on those allegations as a financial lifeline,” Fox News’ filing states. “It manufactured a defamation lawsuit claiming to be a highly reputable company worth more than $2.7 billion and poised to win dozens of contracts in the U.S. and around the world.”
Fox further claimed that they were covering “the biggest story at the time” by covering Trump and his attorney’s claims about Smartmatic, and that there is “no evidence” to support Smartmatic’s claims of lost contracts.
Fox also says that did not air defamatory statements about Smartmatic with actual malice — but rather they were merely trying to “accurately convey what the President was claiming (and still claims.)”
“That is not defamatory,” Fox News says.
In seeking summary judgement, Smartmatic added Wednesday that there is only one “crucial question” that the jury should answer: “How much should Rupert and Lachlan’s media empire pay for promoting an intentional falsehood that destroyed a voting technology company and eroded public trump in American democracy itself?”
Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit from Dominion in April 2023 on the eve of trial over similar allegations that Fox pushed false claims of fraud about the voting system company.
In the settlement, Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million and acknowledged “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”
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