Fox News and Smartmatic trade sharply-worded legal memos
NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 13: Traffic on Sixth Avenue passes by advertisements featuring Fox News personalities, including Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, adorn the front of the News Corporation building, March 13, 2019 in New York City. On Wednesday the network

In New York City on March 13, traffic flows along Sixth Avenue, passing by ads displaying Fox News personalities on the News Corporation building. The scene was captured in a photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Fox News and the voting machine company Smartmatic Corp have recently filed court documents filled with accusations in an ongoing defamation case. They both presented their arguments in separate filings, trying to persuade a judge that they are in the right.

In the New York Supreme Court, both parties submitted legal memos supporting their motions for summary judgment. The documents contained strong language as each side criticized the other’s actions and intentions.

In the Fox News filing, attorneys argued the voting machine company was using the legal process to shore up its flagging business.

“[T]his lawsuit was manufactured to chill speech and generate headlines by a failing election company that was in financial free fall and saw allegations made by the President’s lawyers as a pathway to profitability,” the filing reads.

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In service of this effort, Fox News directly contrasted Smartmatic with Dominion — the other big name voting machine company embroiled in false and unsupported conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

“Smartmatic’s strategy in this case has been to draft behind the rulings in the Dominion lawsuit,” the Fox News filing goes on. “But years of discovery have confirmed one thing above all else: Smartmatic is not Dominion.”

In April 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion some $787.5 million in order to settle a defamation lawsuit. In that lawsuit, Dominion claimed Fox News knowingly smeared them with false claims — turning the “flame” of election fraud lies into a “forest fire.”

Yet, for the network, the two similarly-themed defamation lawsuits are something not entirely unlike wholly dissimilar. That’s because of who the plaintiffs are, according to Fox News.

“Unlike Dominion, Smartmatic was a failing business without a significant presence in the United States entering the 2020 Presidential Election,” the Fox News filing continues. “Unlike Dominion, Smartmatic was mired in a decade of business failure due to inadequate technology, missing certifications, and involvement in multiple highly controversial elections. Unlike Dominion, Smartmatic was founded by Venezuelans and was embroiled in claims of fraud in Venezuelan and Filipino elections well before any controversy arose over the 2020 Presidential Election.”

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