- Dominion’s defamation suit against Mike Lindell “definitely” is not the last, its CEO told CNBC.
- Lindell, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani claimed that Dominion’s voting machines helped “steal” the election.
- When asked whether the company would sue Fox News, John Poulos said Dominion “was not ruling out anyone”.
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The CEO of the Dominion Voting System said the company will continue to take legal action against people who spread unsubstantiated claims that their electronic ballot boxes were used to “steal” the 2020 presidential election – and is not ruling out anyone.
Dominion has already filed defamation lawsuits against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and the personal lawyer of former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, seeking at least $ 1.3 billion in damages in each case.
The suit against Lindell on Monday “is definitely not the last suit,” Dominion CEO John Poulos told CNBC on Tuesday.
Dominion has sent notices and notices to preserve documents for more than 150 people, The Washington Post reported. This includes the media Fox News, Newsmax and One America News.
When asked whether the company would sue Fox News, Poulos said Dominion “was not ruling out anyone”.
According to a conspiracy theory, Dominion and Smartmatic, a rival electoral technology company, developed technology that “transferred” Trump’s votes to President Joe Biden using a method developed under the regime of the now late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez.
The theory has been totally debunked. But that did not stop Powell and Giuliani from pushing elements of the theory as they filed a series of failed lawsuits to overturn the election results. Lindell also spread misinformation about the machines, saying that Dominion “built them to cheat”.
A Fox News spokesman told Insider in early February that the network performed several “fact-checking” segments “before any court conversation.” While several of its news programs reported that there was no evidence that Dominion’s systems changed votes, Fox News, in particular its opinion hosts, “questioned the election results or defended conspiracy theories about it at least 774 times. “in the next two weeks the network called the race, according to Media Matters.
On February 4, Smartmatic filed a $ 2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News over electoral conspiracy theories, saying it “undermined democracy around the world”. Fox News said it reported and fairly commented on “allegations in a heavily contested election” and asked a judge to reject the defamation case.
Insider contacted Fox News to comment on Poulos’ comments.
Lindell was “reckless” in his misinformation sale
Lindell’s claims were “utter nonsense,” Poulos told CNBC, adding that what the controversial CEO pointed out as evidence was in fact “false documents”.
The electoral fraud theory, which Dominion calls “the Big Lie”, did “devastating” damage to the company’s reputation, Poulos said.
But Americans can be “forgiven for believing [the claims]”because they were presented as facts, he said.
Despite naming Lindell and MyPillow in the process, Poulos said Dominion does not want to take the pillow company off the market.
“The main point is to put the facts on the table in front of a court where the evidence is properly judged,” he said. American voters could then understand what happened during the election and how false Lindell’s claims were, he said.
In the process, Dominion listed several promotional codes that MyPillow had used to offer discounts on his website, including “QAnon” and “FightforTrump”.
Lindell uses the codes to attract people to the MyPillow website, Poulos told CNBC.
These codes show “how reckless Mr. Lindell was in his misinformation traffic,” he added.
In the process, Dominion said Lindell’s allegations of electoral fraud caused MyPillow’s sales to increase by up to 40%.
But Lindell told Insider that he expects to lose $ 65 million in pillow revenue this year because of boycotts by retailers, including Bed Bath and Beyond and Kohl’s.