DE - Dominion Voting Systems vs. Fox News, $1.6B Defamation Trial for 2020 election lies, 17 Apr 2023 *Settled $787m* + add’l trials

  • #321

Here’s everyone who is being sued by Dominion:

Mike Lindell


At rallies, television appearances, in a 90-minute “documentary” called Absolute Proof and on the streaming service he self-funds, Mr Lindell repeated widely debunked claims that Dominion had been infiltrated by a vast and ever-changing cast of ne'er-do-wells to commit voter fraud.

By February 2021, Dominion had had enough, and filed a damages claim seeking $1.3bn from the pillow salesman.

The lawsuit alleged that Mr Lindell had “knowingly lied about Dominion to sell more pillows to people who continued tuning in to hear what they wanted to hear about the election”.

Fox News eventually banned him from the network, even though he was a top advertiser.

In court filings in the Dominion case, Fox’s lawyers admitted to knowing he was not a reliable source of information when he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show in January 2021.

Mr Lindell has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, but his efforts to have the civil action dismissed have been unsuccessful.

In a ruling in the District of Columbia District Court in August 2021, Judge Carl Nicholas wrote: “In addition to alleging that Lindell’s claims are inherently improbable, that his sources are unreliable, and that he has failed to acknowledge the validity of countervailing evidence, Dominion has alleged numerous instances in which Lindell told audiences to purchase MyPillow products after making his claims of election fraud and providing MyPillow promotional codes related to those theories.”

Then in October 2022, Mr Lindell’s appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court.

Mr Lindell appears completely undeterred by the legal setbacks.

In March, he called on Dominion to “show us what’s inside your machines?”

According to the New York Times, he described Dominion’s lawsuit as “the biggest cover-up for the biggest crime in United States history — probably in world history.”

Dominion’s attorneys will likely be keeping tabs on his public statements.


Sidney Powell

As a member of former president Trump’s so-called “Elite Strike Force” legal team, Ms Powell promised she would “release the Kraken” – referring to a legendary sea monster – in an interview with Fox Business days after the November election.

The Dallas-based former federal prosecutor helped to file a slew of lawsuits that challenged the election results, all of which failed.

Her inflammatory public statements about election rigging, bribery and fraud led Dominion to file a $1.3bn defamation claim in January 2021.

“Powell’s statements were calculated to — and did in fact — provoke outrage and cause Dominion enormous harm,” an attorney for Dominion wrote in the lawsuit.

Dominion alleged in the lawsuit that Ms Powell had used the profile gained from media appearances to raise money through a company called Defending the Republic, which is also named as a defendant in the suit.

Ms Powell tweeted in response that the claims were designed to “harass, intimidate, & to drain our resources as we seek the truth of #DominionVotingSystems' role in this fraudulent election”.


Rudy Giuliani

With hair dye dripping down the side of his face, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed Dominion had used Venezuelan technology, approved by the late Hugo Chavez, and supported by Cuba and China, to rig the 2020 presidential election.

The comical scene at a press conference in mid-November 2020 was part of “a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion,” the company alleged in a $1.3bn lawsuit filed two months later.

Dominion’s attorneys again claimed that Mr Giuliani had been motivated by financial gain as he made false election fraud accusations in media appearances, on Twitter and his YouTube show.

Mr Giuliani had “cashed in by hosting a podcast where he exploited election falsehoods to market gold coins, supplements, cigars and protection from ‘cyberthieves,’” Dominion’s attorneys wrote.

Dominion CEO John Poulos said in a statement that even the family and friends of its employees were among those who were duped by the avalanche of lies.

Mr Giuliani responded that he welcomed Dominion’s lawsuit as it would allow him to “investigate their history, finances and practices fully and completely”.

Newsmax

After the 2020 election, the Chris Ruddy-owned right-wing news channel Newsmax saw its market share increase as it refused to acknowledge Mr Biden’s victory and hosted a string of election-denying conspiracists.

In doing so, Newsmax “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”, Dominion said in a $1.6bn lawsuit filed in August 2021.

“For Ruddy and Newsmax, the facts did not matter. What mattered was feeding the audience what it wanted — even if it was spreading false information. And the race to the bottom began in earnest, dragging Dominion down with it,” the lawsuit argued.

In June last year, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis denied Newsmax’s motion to dismiss and ruled the lawsuit could proceed.

In a statement to ABC News, a Newsmax spokesman said it was confident of defending the case under First Amendment protections.

“Newsmax reported on both sides in the election dispute without making any claim about the results other than saying they were ‘legal and final,’” the statement said.


One America News (OAN)

Dominion filed a $1.6bn lawsuit against One America News in August 2021, claiming that, like Newsmax, the San Diego-based cable channel had “spread false and manufactured stories about election fraud”.

“Dominion quickly became the focus of this downward spiral of lies, as each broadcaster attempted to outdo the others by making the lies more outrageous, spreading them further, and endorsing them as strongly as possible,” the suit alleged.

It also named OAN hosts Chanel Rion and Christina Bobb in the lawsuit, accusing them of fuelling election conspiracies.

In February, OAN filed a countersuit alleging “tortious interference” with its business.

Patrick Byrne

In August 2021, Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne for spreading election conspiracies, alongside suits against OAN and Newsmax.

It alleged that Mr Byrne had “manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen as part of a massive international conspiracy among China, Venezuelan and Spanish companies”, along with the Justice Department and Chief Justice John Roberts.

“We are filing these three cases today because the defendants named show no remorse, nor any sign they intend to stop spreading disinformation,” Dominion CEO John Poulos said in a statement at the time.

Mr Byrne lost a bid to have the case dismissed in April 2022.

Lindell’s counter-suits against Dominion and another voting machine company, Smartmatic, were dismissed by a judge as “frivolous” and “groundless”.

 
  • #322
Dominion has slam dunk cases against the rest of the liars--
 
  • #323
Yesterday, the NY Times ran a piece written by John Poulos, who is a co-founder and the chief executive of Dominion Voting Systems.

Just a few of his comments below .... he also addresses the apology (that didn't happen). He said he drafted an apology for Fox, to include in the settlement, then his business partner said did he really want Fox to issue an apology that "would be forced, insincere and limited". He threw his draft in the bin, saying that Fox can always apologise of their own volition, it's never too late.



The public has complicated feelings about our decision to end this trial before it ever began, and that’s OK. It’s bittersweet for us, too.

We’ve seen the havoc that lies create for societies, democracies, businesses and families. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve watched it firsthand. My customers, employees, family and friends face harassment, discrimination and threats to this day.

But for us at Dominion, when we reflect on the case and its outcome, we think about our first and foremost goal: accountability.

We knew our case was incredibly strong ....

From the earliest days of discovery, we knew our employees, our customers and the American public needed to see what we had found, and that is exactly what we presented in our pretrial filings and exhibits.


 
  • #324
ox can always apologise of their own volition, it's never too late.
I might" believe that when hell freezes over :)

Edit, I doubt they would give a proper apology. They would just minimise what they did.
 
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  • #325
It looks like the Crikey, Lachlan Murdoch thing is not over yet.



This link is behind a paywall but I was able to read it and it seems that Lachlan Murdoch and company are trying to get Crikey to pay their legal fees using money donated by the public to Crikey to fight the Murdoch claim.
 
  • #326
  • #327
Fox News can claim the settlement as a tax writeoff:
The eye-popping $787.5 million settlement agreement Fox Corp. reached with Dominion Voting Systems could come with a massive $213 million tax break for the conservative news organization.

Fox News may be able to write off as much as a third of the total, TheWrap has confirmed, thanks to tax laws that allow businesses to deduct the cost of doing business.

“That is not an unreasonable number,” John Lieberman, managing director of Perelson Weiner CPAs in New York, said, explaining that such a write-off is possible because tax law allows many “ordinary and necessary” legal costs to be written off. Lieberman added that the IRS may challenge the deductions, but “in theory those costs could be allocated.”
 
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  • #331

Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.”

Carlson’s final Fox News broadcast ended last week with him eating pizza on-set, confidently declaring, “We’ll be back!” Alas, his show is not coming back.
 
  • #332
Any ideas why he was fired? he was the top draw at Fox along with Hannity, wasn't he
I think it was Ray Epps' 60 Minutes interview yesterday:

 
  • #333
I think it was Ray Epps' 60 Minutes interview yesterday:

Didn't see it. Was Tucker fanning the flames on his show about this guy being an FBI plant?
 
  • #334
Ray Epps has accused Fox News host Tucker Carlson of being “obsessed” with him and said he will go to any lengths to “destroy” his life.

“He’s [Carlson] obsessed with me,” said the man who has found himself at the centre of allegations that he was an instigator during the Jan 6 riots.

“He’s going to any means possible to destroy my life and our lives,” he said in the interview with CBS’s Bill Whitaker on Sunday’s 60 Minutes.

“Why?” asked Whitaker.

“To shift blame on somebody else,” Mr Epps said. “If you look at it, Fox News, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, (Matt) Gaetz, they’re all tellin’ us before this thing that it was stolen. So you tell me, who has more impact on people, them or me?”

Carlson has focused on Mr Epps more than 20 times on his top-rated show and a half dozen times so far this year, according to CBS.

Last month, a lawyer for Mr Epps demanded Carlson retract his “false and defamatory” statements about him and deliver a “formal on-air apology” for the “lies” he promoted.

 
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Carlson was expected to interview Vivek Ramaswamy on Monday night’s show, suggesting the decision was especially abrupt.
 
  • #337

Carlson was expected to interview Vivek Ramaswamy on Monday night’s show, suggesting the decision was especially abrupt.

Also reading that CNN just fired Don Lemon. The "conservative makeover" at CNN has left me with no news channel to watch. At least they still have Anderson Cooper. So many news shows on tv, none worth watching anymore.

ETA: Well, there is still BBC News.
 
  • #338
There’s also this:

Carlson was recently named in a lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, a Fox News producer fired after claiming that Fox lawyers had pressured her to give misleading testimony in the Dominion lawsuit. Grossberg had gone to work for Carlson after leaving Maria Bartiromo's Fox show.

Her lawsuit says that Grossberg learned "she had merely traded in one overtly misogynistic work environment for an even crueler one — this time, one where unprofessionalism reigned supreme, and the staff's distaste and disdain for women infiltrated almost every workday decision."

Just last week, Carlson promoted an upcoming documentary highlighting what was described as the Canadian government's increasingly authoritarian turn. Carlson in 2022 on his program expressed support for the Freedom Convoy protesters across Canada.

 
  • #339
@brianstelter


I'm told that both Tucker Carlson AND Don Lemon have retained the famously aggressive entertainment lawyer Bryan Freedman. I have reached out to Freedman; no response yet.

Murdoch is also said to be concerned over Carlson’s coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which the host has promoted the conspiracy theory that it was provoked by government agents.

 
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  • #340

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