December 22, 2020, 11:15 am
The far-right and overwhelmingly pro-Trump “news” outlet Newsmax had to issue a two-minute statement listing all the things that had been claimed on their show that were backed up by zero evidence after being threatened with a defamation lawsuit. The network has featured guests and promoted conspiracy theories attacking Dominion, including Rudy Giuliani’s claim that it was secretly owned by competitor Smartmatic.
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“Sidney Powell is out there saying that states like Texas, they turned away from Dominion machines, because really there’s only one reason why you buy a Dominion machine and you buy this Smartmatic software, so you can easily change votes,” claimed Newsmax host Chris Salcedo on November 18.
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Giuliani has gone so far as saying that Smartmatic was launched by Hugo Chavez, the late former president of Venezuela and communist boogeyman to the U.S. right, to manipulate votes in America.
In reality, Smartmatic machines were not used in the swing states that went to Biden, where all the claims of election fraud are concentrated. In response to the increasing number and intensity of false claims about the company, Smartmatic hired a lawyer and sent out letters to Newsmax, Fox News, and OAN notifying them that they were planning a lawsuit.
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It wasn’t long before Newsmax was “clarifying” on most of their recent political content.
Newsmax also posted a similar disclaimer on their website.
“There are several facts our viewers and readers should be aware. Newsmax has found no evidence either Dominion or Smartmatic owns the other, or has any business association with each other,” they admitted. “We have no evidence Dominion uses Smartmatic’s software or vice versa.”
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“No evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election.”
Fox News also offered a form of retraction on their own “reporting” of this massive conspiracy theory they’ve dedicated so much air time to, but they did so in the form of a weird question-and-answer segment.
“I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to delete, change or alter anything related to vote tabulations,” they had Open Source Election Technology Institute’s Eddie Perez say.
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The lawyer retained by Smartmatic is the same who won a record-breaking settlement with ABC News after they came up with the term “pink slime” to describe a particular beef product. The New York Times has now dubbed the slurry of conspiracy claims coming out of far-right media as “red slime.”
“We’ve gotten to this point where there’s so much falsity that is being spread on certain platforms, and you may need an occasion where you send a message, and that’s what punitive damages can do in a case like this,” said attorney J. Erik Connolly.
*First Published: December 22, 2020, 11:15 am
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