Amid the specter of legal action, conservative news channels are issuing fact-checks and clarifications after airing false, conspiracy-laden claims tied to the 2020 election. Fox News, Fox Business, and new MAGA favorite Newsmax have recently run segments debunking allegations against Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, election technology companies that Donald Trump and his allies have invoked in their attempt to discredit the election results by claiming, without a shred of evidence, that widespread voter fraud was at play.
Over the weekend, Fox News offered a disclosure in the form of a question-and-answer exchange between an anonymous, offscreen voice and Eddie Perez, a voting machines expert, who quashed a series of election-related falsehoods. “I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to delete, change or alter anything related to vote tabulations,” Perez said. The segment aired on programs hosted by Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and Maria Bartiromo, shows where Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump-aligned lawyer Sidney Powell, who was disavowed by the president’s campaign weeks ago after pushing conspiracy theories apparently too outlandish even for them, peddled some of their most far-flung allegations. (Powell now has the president’s ear as he considers ways to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.)
Newsmax followed on Monday, the Associated Press reports, walking back a slew of false claims it had aired about Dominion and Smartmatic, including the apparent lack of relationship between the two firms—contrary to the Trump attorneys’ suggestion that Dominion’s vote counting system, used at some locations in the U.S. elections, had used Smartmatic’s software.
The retreat comes amid reports that the networks could be liable for such false claims in court. Over the weekend, the New York Times’ Ben Smith reported that lawyers from both Smartmatic and Dominion had raised the prospect of legal action: Smartmatic recently sent strong-worded letters to Fox, Newsmax, and One America News, a fringe right-wing outlet that has also enjoyed a post-election boost in ratings and recognition; Tom Clare, a lawyer for Dominion, has threatened legal action against Powell and the Trump campaign. “We are moving forward on the basis that she will not retract those false statements and that it will be necessary for Dominion to take aggressive legal action, both against Ms. Powell and the many others who have enabled and amplified her campaign of defamation by spreading damaging falsehoods about Dominion,” Clare told the Times.
Aside from the sheer lack of merit for these claims (no proof of election-altering fraud has been uncovered, as Trump’s own Justice Department has stated), many of the wild theories aired on the right-wing outlets have conflated, if not completely botched, basic factual details about the election companies under siege. As Smith writes, “Smartmatic wasn’t even used in the contested states” and “its only involvement this November was with a contract to help Los Angeles County run its election.”
Floyd Abrams, one of the country’s top First Amendment lawyers, told the Times that the letters sent by lawyers for Smartmatic and Dominion are “extremely powerful,” noting “the repeated accusations against both companies are plainly defamatory and surely have done enormous reputational and financial harm to both.” The cases, if commenced, “would be highly dangerous to those sued,” Abrams said. Fox, a multibillion-dollar enterprise, is in a different financial position than Newsmax and OAN, Smith notes, both of which are “burning money to steal ratings from Fox” and on the hunt for investors—buyers likely to run the other way in the face of “outstanding litigation with the potential of an enormous verdict.”
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