When Donald Trump and his allies publicized the “big lie” of electoral fraud and a stolen election, it seemed that nothing could stop them from spreading disinformation with impunity.
The pleas of politicians and activists fell on deaf ears. TV networks and newspapers have checked facts in vain. The social media giants were powerless.
But now a little-known technology company, founded 18 years ago in Canada, has conspiracy theorists running in fear. The key: suing them for defamation, potentially for billions of dollars.
“Defamation laws can be a very old mechanism for dealing with a very new phenomenon of mass disinformation,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist. “We have all these fact-checkers, but a lot of people don’t care. Nothing else seems to work, so maybe it works. “
David in this David and Goliath story is Dominion Voting Systems, an election machine company named after the Canada’s Dominion Elections Act of 1920. Its main offices are in Toronto and Denver and it describes itself as the leading supplier of electoral technology in the United States. USA. She says she serves more than 40% of American voters, with clients in 28 states.
But the 2020 elections put a goal on their shoulders. While the White House escaped and Trump desperately pushed through unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, his lawyers and cheerleaders falsely claimed that Dominion had rigged the polls in favor of Joe Biden.
Among the most baroque conspiracy theories was that Dominion was changing votes through algorithms in its electronic ballot boxes that were created in Venezuela to defraud elections for the late dictator Hugo Chávez.
It was ridiculous, but it was also potentially devastating to Dominion’s reputation and ruinous to his business. It also fed a cocktail of conspiracy theories that fed the Trump supporters who invaded the United States Capitol on January 6, when Congress moved to certify the election results. Five people died, including a Capitol police officer.
The company is reacting. She filed $ 1.3 billion defamation lawsuits against Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell for pushing the allegations without evidence.
Separately, Dominion security director Eric Coomer filed a lawsuit against the campaign of Trump, Giuliani, Powell and some conservative media figures and vehicles, saying he was forced into hiding by death threats.
Then came the big one. Last month, Dominion filed a $ 1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, accusing it of trying to increase the audience by amplifying the false allegations.
“The truth is important,” wrote Dominion’s lawyers in the complaint. “Lies have consequences. Fox sold a false history of electoral fraud to serve its own business objectives, seriously injuring Dominion in the process. If this case does not reach the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing goes up. “
The lawsuit argues that Fox’s hosts and guests “took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire,” conveying wild claims that Dominion’s systems changed votes and ignoring the company’s repeated efforts to clear things up.
“Radioactive counterfeits” released by Fox News will cost Dominion $ 600 million over the next eight years, according to the lawsuit, and have resulted in harassment of Dominion employees and the loss of major company contracts in Georgia and Louisiana.
Fox fiercely disputes the charge. He said in a statement: “Fox News Media is proud of our 2020 electoral coverage, which follows the highest tradition of American journalism, and will defend itself vigorously against this baseless lawsuit.”
Other conservative vehicles have also raised objections. Chris Ruddy, The chief executive of Newsmax said: “We think that all of these processes are a violation of press freedom with respect to media organizations. There have been years of collusion investigations in Russia, when all major cable networks have reported unsubstantiated claims. I think Fox was reporting the news and certainly Newsmax was. “
But some observers believe that Dominion has a strong case. Norman Eisen, a senior member of the Brookings Institution, said: “Dominion has an excellent outlook in its litigation against Fox for the simple reason that Fox has consciously repeatedly conveyed the most outrageous and clearest lies.
“There are certainly protections under the first amendment and otherwise, but this is so off-limits, a case so clear, that I think Fox is facing very serious legal exposure here and this is how it should be.
“There shouldn’t be a big television channel that is capable, day after day, of providing a megaphone for outrageous election-related falsehoods that helped trigger a violent uprising on January 6. They should not be able to feed a steady stream of these harmful lies in the political body without any legal consequences. “
‘A real battlefield’
Eisen, a former White House “ethics czar”, suggests that the Dominion case could provide at least one model for dealing with the war against the truth.
“The United States and the world need to deal with disinformation,” he said.
“There can be no doubt that all methods will be required, but defamation law certainly provides a very important vehicle for establishing consequences, and while there is no guarantee when you go to court, this is an exceptionally high risk for Fox with a large price tag attached as well. “
There are indications that the lawsuits, and their serious financial implications, have placed reckless individuals and escaped.
Powell asked a judge to reject the lawsuit against her, arguing that his claims were protected by the right to freedom of expression. But she also offered the unusual defense that she had exaggerated to make a statement and that “reasonable people would not accept such statements as facts, but would see them only as allegations that are awaiting trial by the courts through the adversarial process.”
Two days after the Smartmatic voting machine opened a $ 2.7 billion defamation suit that alleged TV presenter Lou Dobbs falsely accused of electoral fraud, Fox Business abruptly canceled Lou Dobbs Tonight, its most viewed show. She also filed a motion to reject Smartmatic’s action.
Meanwhile, pro-Trump media began using prepared notices or pre-recorded programs to oppose electoral conspiracy theories publicized by guests. When Lindell launched an attack on Dominion on Newsmax in February, co-anchor Bob Sellers tried to stop him and left the set.
RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah, told the Washington Post: “We are seeing how defamation has become a real battleground in the fight against disinformation.
“The threat of massive damage from probably spreading false conspiracy theories on matters of public interest could end up being the only tool that has successfully discouraged this behavior, where so many other tools seem to have failed.”
Defamation lawsuits will be another test of the judiciary as a pillar of American democracy. The independence of the courts has proven robust in relation to dozens of lawsuits by Trump and his allies seeking to overturn the election result.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Policy and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It is such an underappreciated illumination of the multiple paths to practice politics. Sometimes, we are understandably absorbed in what Congress can do, which is sometimes obviously significant, but most of the time it is kind of an impasse.
“But we are going to see the legal system prosecuting the January 6 perpetrators, prosecuting Donald Trump and prosecuting these defamation charges by Dominion about the monstrous lies that were told after the election.
“Thank God for the courts, because the elected branches really blew it.”