WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Lawyers for an electronic voting company that allies of former President Donald Trump have accused of rigging the 2020 presidential election asked a Delaware court Thursday to rule in their favor in a defamation lawsuit against a conservative news organization.
Florida-based Smartmatic sued Newsmax in 2021, alleging that the cable network's hosts and guests made false and defamatory statements in the weeks after the election that suggested Smartmatic had engaged in rigging the election results and that its software had been used to switch votes.
“Smartmatic did not engage in any manipulation of the 2020 election and its software was not used to manipulate a single vote,” Smartmatic's attorney, J. Eric Connolly, told Superior Court Judge Eric Davis during the hearing.
Lawyers for Newsmax, also based in Florida, are asking Davis to rule in their favor ahead of a trial that is expected to last four weeks, starting Sept. 30. The company argues it merely reported serious and newsworthy allegations about possible voter fraud made by Trump and his supporters.
The judge said Florida defamation law applies to the case. Newsmax attorney Misha Tseitlin asked Judge Davis to rule that under Florida law, the “fair reporting” or “neutral reporting” privilege should protect Newsmax from liability.
“There is no evidence that we have harmed them in any way,” Tseitlin said.
Judge Davis did not rule on the competing summary judgment motion and advised the lawyers to continue preparing for trial while he considers their arguments.
The Delaware lawsuit is one of several arising from reporting about conservative news outlets after the 2020 election. Smartmatic is also suing Fox News for defamation in New York and recently settled a lawsuit in the District of Columbia against another conservative outlet, One America News Network.
Dominion Voting Systems has similarly filed several defamation lawsuits against people who spread conspiracy theories that its election equipment was to blame for Trump's loss. Fox News settled with Dominion for $787 million last year in a lawsuit presided over by Davis.
To succeed in its defamation lawsuit against Newsmax, Smartmatic must prove that Newsmax executives acted “with actual malice” or “reckless disregard for the truth” in spreading the false claims of voter fraud.
Connolly, the Smartmatic lawyer, rejected the idea that Newsmax should be able to avoid liability by arguing that it was engaging in fair and neutral reporting.
“These were not balanced, they were not neutral, they were not disinterested,” he said of Newsmax's reporting.
Connolly argued that during the five weeks that the 24 allegedly defamatory reports aired, no one at Newsmax had any evidence to support the widespread claims of voter fraud made by its hosts or guests. He also noted that the company's machines were only used in Los Angeles County in the 2020 election, where Democrat Joe Biden won 71% of the vote.
“It's essentially impossible that we rigged a national election,” Connolly said.
Tseitlin, the Newsmax lawyer, told Davis there was no evidence that the network's hosts or executives knew that claims about voter fraud made by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, conservative lawyer Sidney Powell and others were false.
Instead, Tseitlin said, Newsmax employees were trying to follow CEO Chris Ruddy's instructions to report fairly on issues of public concern and emphasize that allegations of voter fraud had not been proven.
“What's happening here is an editorial decision by Chris Ruddy for Newsmax to report serious allegations by serious people,” he said.
In court documents, Newsmax described Smartmatic as a “troubled election technology company with a checkered history” and said it was seeking to make billions of yen by exploiting a legally unfounded and unconstitutional theory of liability.
Thursday's hearing came two weeks after a federal grand jury in Florida indicted three current and former Smartmatic executives on charges they paid more than $1 million in bribes to install the company's voting machines in the Philippines.
Prosecutors allege that Smartmatic's Venezuelan-born co-founder, Roger Piñate, conspired with others to bribe the chairman of the Philippine Commission on Elections using a slush fund he created by charging exorbitant fees for each voting machine he supplied to authorities.
