“We have no choice,” Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s chief executive and founder, told CNN Business in an interview about the company’s decision to file the lawsuit. “The disinformation campaign that was launched against us is an obliterating one. For us, this is existential and we have to act ”.
The lawsuit, filed in the New York state court, accused Fox, Giuliani, Powell and hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro of intentionally lying about Smartmatic in an attempt to deceive the public into the false belief that the presidential election 2020 was stolen from former President Donald Trump.
“They needed a villain,” said the suit. “They needed someone to blame. They needed someone they could make others hate. A story of good against evil, the kind that would incite an angry crowd, only works if the storyteller provides the audience with someone to impersonate. the evil.”
“With no real villain, the defendants invented one,” added the suit. “The defendants decided to make Smartmatic the villain in their history.”
In a statement on behalf of the network and the named hosts issued after the lawsuit was filed, a Fox News spokesman said: “FOX News Media is committed to providing the full context of each story with detailed reports and clear opinions. proud of our 2020 electoral coverage and I will vigorously defend this process without merit in court. ”
CNN Business is contacting representatives of Giuliani and Powell for comment.
The unfounded conspiracy theories propagated about Smartmatic, which mimicked those that were being pressed against Dominion, falsely suggested that the company’s technology was used across the country and allowed the November vote to be rigged against Trump.
Some conspiracy theory tensions pressed by Fox were aimed at tying the company to the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez. Other strains suggested that Dominion used Smartmatic’s voting software in undecided states and that votes were exported outside the country to be tabulated; both statements were false and Smarmatic pointed out in its lawsuit that it does not work with Dominion because the two companies are competitors.
“It took us completely by surprise,” Mugica told CNN Business of conspiracy theories, noting during the interview that his company did business on several continents and dozens of countries. “We have never seen anything like this in developed markets. We have never seen anything like this before in Europe. We have never seen anything like this before in the United States.”
Throughout the nearly 300-page process, Smartmatic surgically dismantled the theories against it.
“The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 US presidential and vice president elections,” the suit said. “The election was not stolen, rigged or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.”
“By being able to say that Smartmatic was in Los Angeles County and nowhere else, I was able to prove a lie to everything they said with one salient fact,” Connolly told CNN. “I have been doing this for a long time and it can be one of the easiest ways to demonstrate the falsehood I have ever done.”
Smartmatic said in the lawsuit that conspiracy theories have undermined its business relationships worldwide, resulted in a wave of threats against its staff and contributed to a $ 767.4 million drop in its parent’s projected earnings over the next five years. .
In addition, the suit says, Smartmatic will need to spend $ 350,000 annually over the next two years on increased security costs to protect the physical security of its workers and nearly $ 5 million in fees over the next five years to protect the company from a “meteoric rise” in cyber attacks.
Smartmatic’s parent company estimated that “misinformation invented and spread by defendants” cost at least $ 2.7 billion in total damages, $ 2.4 billion of which are specific to Smartmatic, according to the lawsuit.
Smartmatic used the fact-checking segment in its lawsuit to argue that Fox could easily have articulated the facts and conveyed the truth to viewers before its legal notice.
“Mr. Perez has always been available to Fox defendants,” said the suit. “Fox defendants could have put Mr. Perez on the air anytime before December 18th.”
The Smartmatic lawsuit also pointed to a November segment of Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson, in which he told viewers that Powell had not provided him with any evidence to support his electoral conspiracies. The lawsuit referred to Carlson as a “respected figure” within the network and concluded that if Powell had provided Fox with any evidence to support his wild claims, it would have been shared with him.
The lawsuit claimed that Fox and its hosts “were motivated, in part, by a desire for ratings, to cater to individuals and companies that supported President Trump and to prevent the loss of viewers to competing media organizations like OAN and Newsmax.”
Fox faced an intense reaction to being the first broadcaster to call the state of Arizona by current President Joe Biden. The controversy called the network’s decision table, which days later proved to be accurate, infuriated Trump and his supporters. Many of these supporters migrated to Newsmax and OAN, smaller right-wing channels that for weeks refused to acknowledge Biden’s legal victory.
Mugica told CNN Business that when he first saw a conspiracy theory about Smartmatic, he didn’t care and considered it absurd.
“I thought it was crazy, but it is so crazy that it will not have legs,” he said. “And then it became very clear that it was not a single mention. They were repeating the message and repeating the message. It was an ongoing campaign.”
Mugica said that “95%” of his time was devoted to tackling inaccurate information about his company.
“Everything we do every day is to survive,” he said.
Asked directly whether there is a real chance that Smartmatic will not be able to withstand the storm it faces, Mugica replied, “Yes, absolutely. It is a real possibility.”
Connolly said Smartmatic did not rule out the possibility of opening additional lawsuits against other entities, such as OAN and Newsmax. Asked whether the company will file a lawsuit against Trump, Connolly said he is considering the possibility, but admitted it would be difficult.
“Obviously, we are looking at all the possible processes that can be initiated. We are not doing this lightly,” he said. “I think it is very difficult, if not impossible, to file a case against a president based on statements made by a president wearing the president’s hat.”
Connolly, who estimated that the process will take between two and five years to resolve, said he hoped the actions taken by Smartmatic could clean up the polluted information environment in the U.S.
“I think it is the type of case that must be brought up now to try to steer us away from misinformation,” said Connolly. “Disinformation has a free rein now. This type of case can be a straight shot that the courts can offer that says, ‘Let’s get back to reality. Let’s go back to the factual account. ‘