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 that they were part of a nefarious electoral scheme.
The fact 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.
Newsmax agreed to pay Smartmatic $40 million as part of a settlement last year following the voting technology company’s election defamation lawsuit against the right-wing news outlet, according to a new regulatory filing. The settlement, reached in September, included a cash payment and an option to purchase stock in Newsmax, the media company said in its filing. Newsmax said payments totaling $20 million have already been made, with the rest coming before July.
If the developments sound at all familiar, that’s because there have been a variety of related cases. It was just last year, for example, when a far-right network called One America News also settled a related defamation lawsuit with Smartmatic, though the terms of the agreement have never been disclosed.
There’s also, of course, Dominion Voting Systems, which faced related falsehoods and came to a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News’ parent company in 2023. (Newsmax avoided a defamation case when it issued a public apology to one of Dominion Voting Systems’ top employees.)
What’s more, let’s not forget that one big case that still has not been resolved: About a year ago, a New York judge ruled that a $2.7 billion defamation suit filed by Smartmatic against Fox could continue, and in January, a state appeals court came to the same conclusion.
Time will tell what becomes of that case — another settlement remains a distinct possibility — but as the legal process advances, it’s worth keeping in mind that Smartmatic’s lawsuit poses real danger for Fox. The Washington Post published an analysis a while back that helped summarize the significance of the dispute. Many of the allegations against Smartmatic were similar to those against Dominion, and Smartmatic was often lumped in with Dominion in the same allegation. They included the false claims that Dominion machines used Smartmatic software to rig the election. They included the claim that Smartmatic was used to rig elections before and that its purported foreign ties demonstrated that. Smartmatic’s software was also cast as eminently flawed and even deliberately hackable. Indeed, Smartmatic was often cast as the actual conduit for stealing the election.
Fox has denied any wrongdoing. 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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