The Fox News logo can be viewed 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, arguing that the cable news giant falsely claimed in an effort to raise the faltering ratings that the voting company had plotted the election. 2020.
It is the first defamation lawsuit filed 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 after the loss of the Trump election to Joe Biden . These claims helped spur the riots that ravaged the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent siege that left five people dead, including a police officer. The siege led to the historic second removal of Trump.
Dominion argues that Fox News, which expanded inaccurate claims that Dominion modified the votes, “sold a false history of election fraud to serve its own business purposes, seriously injuring Dominion in the process,” according to a copy of the demand obtained by The Associated Press.
Some segments of Fox News live reporting have denied some of the claims directed at Dominion.
There was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, a fact that several election officials across the country – and even Trump’s attorney general William Barr – have confirmed. The Republican governors of Arizona and Georgia, key battlefield states crucial to Biden’s victory, also confirmed the integrity of the election in their states. Almost all of the legal challenges Trump and his allies were dismissed by the judges, including two thrown by the Supreme Court, which has three judges nominated by Trump.
However, some Fox News employees raised false allegations that Dominion had changed the votes using algorithms on its voting machines that had been set up in Venezuela to prepare elections for the late dictator Hugo Chávez. On-air personalities took Trump allies Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who spread the claims, and then amplified those claims on Fox News ’massive social media platforms.
Dominion said in the lawsuit that it repeatedly tried to set the record, but was ignored by Fox News.
The company argues that Fox News, a network that has several pro-Trump personalities, pushed the false claims to explain the former president’s loss. The cable giant lost viewers after the election and some Trump supporters felt they did not support Republicans enough.
Dominion’s lawyers said Fox News’ behavior differed greatly from other media reports on the claims.
“This was a conscious, business-conscious decision to approve, repeat, and spread these lies to maintain their vision,” said Susman Godfrey’s attorney Justin Nelson.
Although Dominion serves 28 states, until the 2020 election it had been largely unknown outside the electoral community. He is now widely targeted by conservative circles, seen by millions of people as one of the main villains of a fictional story in which Democrats across the country conspired to steal votes from Trump, according to the lawsuit.
Dominion employees, from its software engineers to its founder, have been harassed. Some received death threats. And the company has suffered “enormous and irreparable economic damage,” lawyers said.
Dominion has also sued Minnesota-based Giuliani, Powell and CEO of MyPillow 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’s lawyers said they have not yet filed lawsuits against specific media personalities on Fox News, but the door remains open. Some on Fox News knew the allegations were false, but their comments were drowned out, lawyers said.
“The dollar stops with Fox for that,” lawyer Stephen Shackelford said. “Fox chose to put it on all of its multiple platforms. They relayed it, they re-posted it on social media and elsewhere.”
The lawsuit was filed in Delaware, where the two companies are incorporated, although Fox News is headquartered in New York and Dominion is headquartered in Denver.