Fox News recently reached a $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems before trial, avoiding the need for hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity to testify about the false claims made about the 2020 election. However, this settlement does not mean that the risk of embarrassment for Fox News is over, as Smartmatic, another company suing the network for defamation, has said it will still press their case.
Smartmatic is alleging that false reports aired on Fox News have caused damage to democracy worldwide and is seeking $2.7 billion in damages. As part of their case, Smartmatic has included as defendants key figures at Fox News such as lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, in addition to Fox News Anchors Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro.
Former Fox News host Lou Dobbs, who left the network in 2021, is also named in the lawsuit. Fox News attempted to have the case dismissed, but the New York appeals court ruled in a 5-0 decision that their effort was unsuccessful and that Giuliani and Pirro should remain as defendants in the case. Furthermore, the court also opened the door to adding Fox News’ parent company, the Fox Corporation, as a defendant.
In a statement, J. Erik Connolly, an attorney for Smartmatic, noted that Dominion’s litigation had exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign, and that Smartmatic had taken up the mantle to reveal the rest. Speaking in February 2021, a Fox News spokesperson said the lawsuit was a threat to free speech and a “flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs”.
Smartmatic is a Florida-based provider of voting technology, owned by Venezuelan investors and founded in the late 2000s to address the growing shift toward electronic voting worldwide. It has been at the centre of conspiracy theories regarding its supposed involvement in rigging the 2020 US presidential election, with Sidney Powell claiming it had helped in this regard. The company has responded that it had in fact blown the whistle on fraud in Venezuela, revealing in 2017 that President Nicolas Maduro had “manipulated” the vote for a new, extra-constitutional assembly.
As the case inches closer to a trial, it remains to be seen if Fox News will have to face further embarrassment for the false claims aired on its network.
