The Fox News logo can be seen on an iPad on October 25, 2017.
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Dominion Voting Systems filed a $ 1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, alleging that the cable news giant falsely claimed that the voting company faked the 2020 election in an effort to boost faltering ratings.
It is the first defamation charge brought against a media outlet by the voting company, which was the target of misleading, false and bizarre claims spread by President Donald Trump and his allies in the wake of Trump’s election loss against Joe Biden. Those allegations helped spur rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 during a violent siege that killed five people, including a police officer. The siege led to Trump’s historic second impeachment.
Dominion claims that Fox News, reinforcing false claims that Dominion changed votes, “sold a false story of electoral fraud to serve its own commercial ends, with Dominion seriously injured in the process,” according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The Associated. Press.
Some on-air reporting segments of Fox News have debunked some of the claims against Dominion.
There was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, a fact that a string of election officials across the country – and even Trump’s Attorney General William Barr – have confirmed. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, important states on the battlefield critical to Biden’s victory, also vouched for the integrity of their states’ elections. Nearly all of Trump’s and his allies’ legal challenges were dismissed by judges, including two thrown by the Supreme Court, which has three Trump-nominated justices.
Still, some Fox News employees advanced false allegations that Dominion had changed votes using algorithms in his voting machines created in Venezuela to manipulate elections for the late dictator Hugo Chavez. On-air personalities brought in Trump allies Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who spread the claims, then bolstered those claims on Fox News’s massive social media platforms.
Dominion said in the lawsuit that it repeatedly tried to rectify matters but was ignored by Fox News.
The company says Fox News, a network of several pro-Trump personalities, pushed through the false claims to explain away the former president’s loss. The cable giant lost viewership after the election and was seen by some Trump supporters as insufficient support for the Republicans.
Dominion lawyers said Fox News’ behavior is vastly different from that of other media outlets reporting on the claims.
“This was a deliberate, business-like decision to endorse and repeat and broadcast these lies to maintain viewership,” said Susman Godfrey’s lawyer Justin Nelson.
Although Dominion serves 28 states, it was largely unknown outside of the electoral community until the 2020 election. It is now widely targeted by conservative circles, seen by millions as one of the main villains in a fictional story in which Democrats across the country conspired to steal votes from Trump, the lawsuit said.
Dominion employees, from the software engineers to the founder, have been harassed. Some received death threats. And the company has suffered “immense and irreparable economic damage,” said lawyers.
Dominion has also sued Giuliani, Powell and the CEO of MyPillow in Minnesota over the claims. A rival technology company, Smartmatic USA, also sued Fox News for election claims. Unlike Dominion, Smartmatic’s participation in the 2020 election was limited to Los Angeles County.
Dominion attorneys said they have not yet filed lawsuits against specific media personalities at Fox News, but the door remains open. Some at Fox News knew the claims were false, but their comments were drowned out, lawyers said.
“The buck quits Fox,” said attorney Stephen Shackelford. “Fox chose to post this on all of its many platforms. They re-broadcast it, republished it on social media and other places.”
The charges were filed in Delaware, where both companies are included, although Fox News is headquartered in New York and Dominion is based in Denver.