Photo: Andy Kropa
Fox News has now been sued for $1.6 billion, courtesy of a defamation suit launched by Dominion Voting Systems. Per NPR, the lawsuit is one of several that the voting machine company has launched against a variety of right-wing figures in recent months, all in an attempt to fight back against claims floated during the 2020 election (shudder) that the company’s machines were used to perpetrate election fraud.
Filed on Friday, the suit alleges that “Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process.” This, the company claims, led in turn to harassment and threats of violence against some of its employees, as well as huge amounts of lost profits. The suit falls in line with several others the company has issued of late, including those aimed at Donald Trump legal team members Sydney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and, of course, The MyPillow guy. (It’s also not the only such defamation suit filed against Fox News by a voting machine company lately; Smartmatic has lodged a similar complaint, to the tune of $2.7 billion, against the network.) Dominion’s lawsuit goes so far as to lay blame for the January 6 Capitol insurrection at the network’s doorstep, alleging that its attempts to undermine the electoral process helped kick off the events of that depressing and violent day.
Fox has already issued a statement contesting the suit, stating that it’s “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.” It’s similarly moved to dismiss the Smartmatic suit—although it also abruptly canceled Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business show right around that same time, which the network has claimed was a total coincidence, and has nothing to do with Dobbs’ on-air comments being at the center of that particular suit.