After Donald Trump’s re-election defeat in 2020, a variety of far-right media outlets eagerly embraced the Republican’s baseless conspiracy theories about the outcome, fueling widespread confusion among conservative voters. But as part of the broader partisan push, some of these outlets also took aim at voting machine companies, falsely claiming they were part of a nefarious electoral scheme.
That these claims weren’t true did not sit well with the companies — or their lawyers. Indeed, as NBC News reported, the legal fallout from this mess is still unfolding.
The conservative cable news channel Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by the voting machine company Dominion over baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, according to a new regulatory filing. The settlement averts what promised to be a high-profile trial. Newsmax and Dominion Voting Systems agreed to the settlement on Friday, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The timing was striking: Right around the time that Trump announced a renewed crusade against voting machines, based in part on his conspiratorial assumptions about the election equipment, the public learned of Newsmax’s settlement with one of the nation’s leading voting machine companies.
Dominion said it was “pleased to have settled this matter,” while Newsmax said it stands by its coverage.
The developments aren’t too surprising. It was just four months ago when a judge ruled that the far-right media outlet did, in fact, make defamatory statements about Dominion Voting Systems when it falsely claimed the company rigged votes in the 2020 presidential election, concluding that Dominion had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that the statements from Newsmax were false and would “likely cause reasonable viewers to think significantly less favorably about Dominion than if the viewers knew the truth.”
That set the stage for a trial, at which point a jury would have decided whether the cable channel acted with “actual malice.” But it also opened the door to settlement negotiations, which apparently ended in an agreement.
If these developments sound at all familiar, that’s because there have been a variety of related cases. It was just five months ago when Newsmax agreed to pay Smartmatic $40 million as part of a settlement in a different defamation case involving a voting technology company.
Last year, a far-right network called One America News also settled a related defamation lawsuit with Smartmatic, although the terms of that agreement have never been disclosed. There’s also, of course, the $787.5 million settlement between Dominion and Fox News’ parent company in 2023. Finally, let’s not forget there’s still one big case pending: Fox News is facing a $2.7 billion lawsuit from Smartmatic, and as The New York Times reported, that case is set to proceed to trial in a Manhattan state court unless the parties reach a settlement. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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