Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images, Roy Rochlin/Getty Images, Steven Ferdman/Getty Images The Fox News hosts Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, and Lou Dobbs.
Dominion could sue other media outlets following its lawsuit against Fox News, its attorney said.
Dominion claims Fox News helped spread a conspiracy theory that its machines “flipped” votes.
Tom Clare told Axios it was “a fair assumption” Dominion would sue others that spread the theory.
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Dominion Voting Systems has already filed four defamation lawsuits, including one against Fox News, over baseless claims that its machines helped rig the 2020 US election, and one of the company’s attorneys says other media outlets could be next.
It could also sue individual Fox News employees, and the company hasn’t ruled out suing former President Donald Trump, the attorney, Tom Clare, told Axios on Monday.
As Trump contested his loss in November’s election, a conspiracy theory emerged that Dominion voting machines “flipped” votes from Trump to Joe Biden through a method developed with the regime of the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. The theory has been thoroughly debunked.
On Friday, Dominion filed a lawsuit against Fox News, claiming the network gave prominence to the election-fraud claims as a tactic to revive its ratings. Fox News told Insider that it was “proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.”
Clare told Axios that other outlets “played a similar role to Fox in spreading these lies” and that it was “a fair assumption” that Dominion would sue other media outlets. He didn’t name any of them.
“We’re trying to get to the media outlets that really gave this a much bigger platform,” he said. “I expect that we’re going to be holding them accountable as well.”
He said Dominion’s lawyers were still looking into the evidence. “This is not one of those cases where we’re going to fire first and aim later,” he said.
Since January, Dominion has also filed lawsuits against the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, accusing them of helping spread the conspiracy theory. It is seeking $US1.3 ($2) billion damages in each suit.
Dominion is seeking $US1.6 ($2) billion in its Fox News suit.
Smartmatic has also sued Fox News, naming specific hosts
Dominion’s lawsuit was just against Fox News. Its fellow voting-technology company Smartmatic, which has also been baselessly accused of “flipping” votes, named the Fox News hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro as defendants in its lawsuit against the network.
Fox News Media, Bartiromo, Pirro, and Dobbs all filed separate motions to dismiss the lawsuit, Fox News said.
Clare said Dominion hadn’t ruled out suing individual Fox News personalities and could join these cases to the larger Fox News one or file separate cases.
He added, however, that he considered Fox News to be “the entity with the megaphone.”
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Several of Fox News’ shows reported that there was no evidence of Dominion’s systems changing votes. But Fox News, in particular its opinion hosts, “questioned the results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories about it at least 774 times” in the two weeks after the network called the race, according to Media Matters. Insider has asked Fox News for comment on the Media Matters report.
When asked whether Dominion would file a suit against Trump, Clare said: “We haven’t ruled anyone out.”
He said that Dominion’s lawyers would look into the role that the president and the White House played in spreading the conspiracy theory. “If the evidence leads us to believe that we’ve got strong claims,” he said, “that’s something we’re going to look at.”
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deadlast5 on March 30th, 2021 at 13:41 UTC »
Can pfizer go after Fox next for all of their vaccine bs?
Ontario0000 on March 30th, 2021 at 11:50 UTC »
Dominion lawyers are seeing massive $$$ if they win.From what I research they hired the best defamation lawyers out there and even hired retired judges to provide expertise in these cases.
PuebloCicada on March 30th, 2021 at 11:36 UTC »
Please do. They dont deserve any of the money theyve stolen over the years.