Dominion Voting Systems drags Fox News to court

Dominion Voting Systems drags Fox News to court

The voting machine manufacturer files a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit claiming loss of revenue and damage to reputation due to false and defamatory statements aired during the US Presidential poll late last year

Fox News has landed up in huge trouble for going overboard in its support of Donald Trump during last year's US Presidential poll and spreading his claim that the polls were systematically rigged against him.

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a defamation lawsuit in Delaware Superior Court against Trump's favorite news channel seeking damages for Fox's claims that Dominion rigged the 2020 presidential election against Trump.

Voting machines manufactured by Dominion were used in the Presidential poll. The company is now claiming over $1 billion in damages, claiming that Fox's on-air claims damaged their business and resulted in their employees being the targets of harassment.

Dominion has claimed in the lawsuit that false and defamatory on-air statements were made by famous Fox personalities like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, resulting in damages to its business, both in reputation and the loss of contracts.

The allegations made by Fox and its affiliated media channels about Dominion included:

* Dominion committed election fraud by rigging the 2020 presidential election

* Dominion's software and algorithms manipulated vote counts in the election

* Dominion is owned by a Venezuelan company and was used to rig elections for Hugo Chavez

* Dominion paid kickbacks to government officials who agreed to use Dominion machines in their jurisdictions for the 2020 Presidential election.

Dominion has now claimed that Fox acted with malice in spreading this falsehood despite being aware that these stories were fabrications. Fox, however, decided to promote the falsehood, which thereby "took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire," and "recklessly disregarded the truth" to inflate its flagging viewership numbers.

Along with punitive damages to be determined at trial, Dominion seeks lost profits of $600 million, lost enterprise value of $1 billion, and expenses associated with security and combatting Fox's disinformation campaign at $1 million. Fox has termed the lawsuit baseless.

Dominion had earlier in January 2021 filed other defamation suits against some prominent conservatives, including former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for $1.3 billion.

Despite Fox and some other US media houses promoting Trump's claims of fraud in the 2020 election, the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency termed the 2020 election as the most secure in American history.