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Dominion Voting Systems will return to court in September 2024, just weeks before a pivotal presidential election, with another defamation lawsuit. This time, the target is the conservative news network NewsMax.
The television network reported on many of the claims of a stolen election in 2020 that came from outgoing president Donald Trump and his allies. The claims about Dominion’s voting machines, like the ones that landed Fox News in hot water and led to a massive $787 million settlement, have never been fully proven and many have been outright disproven.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, who also presided over the Fox defamation suit, has ruled that the suit can go forward, placing it on the calendar ahead of a possible rematch between Donald Trump and President Joe Biden at the ballot box.
Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Newsmax over the right-wing network’s airing of 2020 election lies is scheduled to go to trial in late September 2024, a Delaware judge decided https://t.co/NDwrwGMjxm
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) September 19, 2023
The allegations stem from Newsmax broadcasts that included claims that Dominion “has a long history of rigging elections,” its software “altered and flipped” votes in the 2020 election, and that the “entire election was hacked” in Biden’s favor. None of those claims were true, even though they were peddled on Newsmax by Trump allies, including Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell and Patrick Byrne, who are facing defamation lawsuits of their own.
Newsmax is also facing a massive defamation suit from Smartmatic, another voting technology company that was accused by right-wing figures of rigging the 2020 election.
NewsMax is defending itself by saying it was merely reporting on the comments from Trump allies like Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Lindell. However, Fox News tried a similar defense.
Complicating Fox’s defense, however, was the revelation of what its primetime, opinion hosts were saying privately, as revealed in texts that were part of Dominion’s suit. Those texts and other communications revealed that the same hosts who had pro-Trump allies on to talk about the stolen election did not actually buy into the theories.
The same complication could haunt NewsMax hosts, as well.
