Smartmatic argues that there is substantial evidence suggesting that former President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi have targeted the voting technology firm in a spiteful and selective manner. This action, the company claims, is a direct response to Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuits filed against Trump’s allies following the contentious 2020 election.

During that election, Smartmatic’s technology was exclusively utilized in Los Angeles County, a region that Joe Biden won by a significant margin. Despite this, Trump’s supporters, some of whom appeared on cable news channels, propagated unfounded assertions linking the company to the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, insinuating its involvement in election fraud. These claims prompted Smartmatic to initiate defamation lawsuits against those it accused of damaging its business. While some of these legal battles have been resolved, the lawsuit against Fox News is still ongoing, as is Smartmatic’s effort to recover over $56,000 in sanctions from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Smartmatic contends that in defending itself against these false claims, it is now being unfairly targeted with prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), even as Trump and Bondi appear to have shifted their stance on pardons and policy initiatives.

Much like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, former FBI Director James Comey, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Smartmatic seeks to challenge the Department of Justice on what it perceives as a “presumption of vindictiveness.” Although cases against Comey and James were dismissed for unrelated reasons, Abrego Garcia’s case in Tennessee highlights potential attempts by the Trump administration to avoid having officials testify under oath about the case origins. This has led to delays in evidentiary hearings and could eventually result in courtroom testimonies.

Smartmatic has referenced these cases as part of its argument for conducting “discovery and a hearing” on claims of vindictive or selective prosecution.

In recent times, the Trump administration has taken several aggressive measures, including a raid in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize 2020 election ballots. It has also filed lawsuits across the nation to obtain states’ voter rolls and has recently turned its attention to Maricopa County. This area was previously embroiled in the “Sharpiegate” controversy during and after the 2020 election, an issue that seemingly persists.

For Smartmatic, there’s a connection between Trump’s “fixation” on 2020 ahead of the 2026 midterms and the DOJ’s October indictment of the company for alleged bribery and money laundering in the Philippines in 2016.

“To secure the Constitution’s promise of due process, an indictment’s accusations must follow only from fair and impartial decision-making, free from improper political motives or the desire to arbitrarily punish someone the Executive Branch dislikes. But since returning to office, President Trump has openly waged a campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies—chief among them those who undermine his mantra that the 2020 election was rigged—and demanded the Department of Justice  take up the sword,” Smartmatic asserted, calling itself the “latest victims of this punitive and unconstitutional use of prosecutorial power.”

Although the outcome of Garcia’s claim is still unclear, Smartmatic cited each of these examples — as well as other cases that involve Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, a recurring figure in matters of interest to Trump in South Florida — to assert that the administration is prosecuting the company to further the “collective false narrative that President Trump did not actually lose the 2020 election” and “provide[] perceived defenses and delay excuses for his allies in their defamation cases.”

For instance, Smartmatic has tried for over a year now to get Lindell to pay up for filing some “frivolous” claims against the company after Dominion Voting Systems sued him in Washington, D.C., federal court. In a recent court filing claiming an inability to pay the sanctions, Lindell suggested Smartmatic’s indictment was relevant to his noncompliance with a court order to pay sanctions.

Smartmatic told U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, a Barack Obama appointee, that the Biden administration “chose not to prosecute” in 2024, and the only factor that changed is Trump.

Thus, the company said, it was swept up into a “well-documented” revenge streak, even as Trump separately “pardoned at least 38 individuals charged with or convicted of a total of fraud, corruption, and money laundering offenses,” and as Bondi decided to “shift focus away from” FCPA cases that didn’t involve a “human smuggling and the trafficking of narcotics and firearms” connection.

As a result, Smartmatic demanded the case be dismissed “with prejudice,” so it can’t be brought again, or the judge allow discovery of Trump and his allies’ “improper involvement in the DOJ’s decision” to prosecute for retaliatory reasons.

“President Trump’s new DOJ took the exceedingly rare action of indicting the company for allegedly violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — a step the DOJ had not taken against any company for 15 years. That charging decision directly conflicted with the Department’s new policies and was not supported by a change in the law or the evidence. Instead, the only consequential changes in this case since 2024 were the President, his DOJ, and their well-documented crusade to unconstitutionally target their perceived political enemies, like Smartmatic,” the filing concluded. “Because such an abuse of prosecutorial discretion offends the Constitution and the rule of law, this Court should dismiss the superseding indictment with prejudice. At a minimum, the Court must permit discovery as to President Trump and his political allies’—many of them highly motivated defendants in the defamation cases brought by Smartmatic who face potential damages in the billions—improper involvement in the DOJ’s decision to vindictively and selectively target SGO for prosecution.”

That discovery should include “all communications between the White House, and any of its agents or representatives, and the DOJ” about whether the charging decision was punishment for Smartmatic’s “exercis[e of] its legal rights to bring the defamation lawsuits,” the filing added.