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Voting-tech company settles with right-wing network over false election claims
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Once more, a voting tech company has settled its defamation lawsuit over false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election before the start of trial — in this instance, Smartmatic USA’s suit against the conservative network Newsmax.
Thursday’s settlement occurred during the jury selection process. A four-week trial was scheduled to begin in Delaware on Monday.
Neither side made details of the settlement public.
Smartmatic emailed a statement saying it is “very pleased to have secured the completion of the case against Newsmax.” The statement said Smartmatic is now shifting gears to focus on its related suits against Fox News and Fox Corp.
“Lying to the American people has consequences,” the company’s statement said. “Smartmatic will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable.”
Lawsuits stemming from 2020 election continue
The case is just one in a flurry of lawsuits surrounding false claims about fraud in the 2020 election. In 2023, on the eve of opening arguments, Dominion Voting Systems settled a defamation case against Fox News for $787.5 million.
Dominion also is suing Newsmax in Delaware Superior Court, while Smartmatic is pursuing a case against Fox News in New York.
Smartmatic also settled a similar case against One America News Network earlier this year. The details of that settlement also remain confidential.
Two defamation cases overseen by the same judge
The size of Fox's record settlement spoke to the gravity of the recurring false claims by the network about Dominion. The presiding judge, Eric M. Davis, had already ruled that Fox News had knowingly and repeatedly defamed Dominion before the settlement. The only question before the jury was to determine actual and punitive damages.
Davis also oversaw the Smartmatic case against Newsmax. He earlier ruled that Smartmatic could not seek punitive damages beyond any direct losses it could show as a result of being defamed. “There is no evidence that Newsmax acted with evil intent towards Smartmatic,” the judge wrote.
Much like Dominion’s case against Fox, Smartmatic’s case against Newsmax centered on false statements made on dozens of television segments in late 2020 in which hosts, producers and guests linked the voting machine company to vote-switching conspiracy theories.
Smartmatic operated only in Los Angeles County during the 2020 elections. No fraud was alleged there. Given California’s strong Democratic tilt, no influence could have affected the broader outcome.
The network’s guests and hosts embraced allegations that Smartmatic software flipped votes during the election that year.
Among the offending segments: Newsmax hosts replayed exchanges from Fox News amplifying conspiracy theories about election fraud promoted by Trump legal adviser Sidney Powell. Newsmax’s Greg Kelly told viewers, “I believe her, and I don’t believe the critics." Powell was sanctioned by a federal judge in 2021 and subsequently pleaded guilty to election interference in Georgia in 2023.
By late 2020, Newsmax started airing a disclaimer that no evidence linked Dominion or Smartmatic to the manipulation of votes and disavowed other related conspiracy theories. The next year, it broadcast an apology and a retraction to claims about a Dominion employee who faced death threats.
Looming indictments
In legal filings, Newsmax denied that it engaged in any defamatory action toward Smartmatic.
Even so, the further unspooling of its defense strategy may have proven embarrassing for Newsmax. In a day-long pre-trial hearing earlier this month, the network’s lawyers indicated that some of its litigation strategy may have relied on the argument that producers at the cable news channel didn’t didn’t realize Smartmatic and Dominion were two separate companies. The legal briefs also signaled that Newsmax’s on-air personalities weren’t subject to its journalistic standards because those guidelines governed its "writing" more than its broadcasts.
Even before Davis nixed the possibility of punitive damages, there was also some legal sparring over Smartmatic’s changing estimates of how much it was worth. Lawyers acknowledged a “$1 billion swing” in its proposed valuation.
Smartmatic had also received a public black eye this summer with the revelation that federal authorities had indicted several company officials, including its president, for a bribery scheme in the Philippines. Davis had ruled that Newsmax would be allowed to present some evidence about that issue in its defense during trial.
Those developments made the odds more daunting that a trial would yield greater results for Smartmatic than a settlement. And they could come into play in the New York trial against Fox as well.
"Smartmatic unsurprisingly chose to settle its case with Newsmax on the eve of trial after a series of major setbacks devastated its case," a spokesperson for Fox News Media said in a statement Thursday evening. "Smartmatic's claims against Fox are similarly impaired, unsupported by the facts and intended to chill First Amendment freedoms."
The network said it was looking forward to defending its case in court.
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