Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani on Monday seeking $1.3 billion in damages for his "demonstrably false” allegations about the company's voting machines, the New York Times reports. Why it matters: Giuliani led former President Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the election and spread the baseless conspiracy theory that Dominion's voting machines flipped votes from Trump to Joe Biden. Another one of Trump's allies, Sidney Powell, is also facing a defamation lawsuit for falsely claiming that Dominion was part of an international communist plot to rig the election. The lawsuit against Giuliani is based on more than 50 statements he made at hearings, on Twitter, on his podcast and in media appearances, including after Dominion sent him a legal notice calling on him to stop, according to the Times. The big picture: Dominion's founder and CEO John Poulos told the Axios Re:Cap podcast earlier this month that the company has not ruled out filing similar suits against President Trump and others.
Rudy better hope Donnie pays up Rudy Giuliani has admitted that his associate sought $20,000 (£14,600) per day from the Trump campaign in return for his efforts to overturn the US election result – representing a price hike of 10 times the usual sum, according to a report. Donald Trump’s personal lawyer has consistently denied requesting such a fee for his services, following a Washington Post report suggesting the pair – previously fierce allies – had fallen out over demands for that exact amount, with the former president taking offence and ordering his aides not to pay it. But it emerged on Saturday that Mr Giuliani reportedly conceded in a short phone interview with The New York Times that his associate Maria Ryan had in fact sent Trump campaign officials an email detailing such a fee shortly after election day. According to The Times, which has seen a copy of the email allegedly sent to at least three Trump campaign officials from a Giuliani Partners account, it stated the firm was drafting an engagement letter and, rather than a typical daily fee of $2,000, “we will contract for $20,000 a day which will include all of the expenses for Mr Giuliani and his staff”. “Mr Giuliani began working the case in the wee hours of the morning on 4 November,” the email reportedly said. “He has a team in Washington working out of rented hotel rooms.” In his phone call with the paper, Mr Giuliani reportedly insisted he was unaware of the email’s existence at the time it was sent, and said that Ms Ryan – who works as chief executive of a New Hampshire hospital – had consulted with another associate, Larry Levy, about what Mr Giuliani should bill the Trump campaign. The email came at a time when the Trump campaign was raising vast amounts of money from its supporters to contest the results of the election – which the former president and his allies sought to undermine with baseless allegations of voter fraud. Mr Giuliani was often at the forefront of such efforts, notably during the effective collapse of Mr Trump’s electoral bid outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping on 7 November and at the “Save America” rally held ahead of the fatal insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January, during which Mr Giuliani called for “trial by combat”. “I never had a single expectation of being paid a penny,” Mr Giuliani reportedly told The Times. “I feel extremely bad that I’m portrayed as some kind of money-grubbing ambulance chaser,” the former New York City mayor said, adding: “I represented him out of my sense of commitment. “I didn’t see anything about this that was going to lead to great wealth. I did see a lot about this that was going to lead to great torture.” There are now calls for Mr Giuliani to have his legal licence suspended and to be investigated over his actions in support of Mr Trump. Despite speculation that Mr Giuliani may be among those pardoned by Mr Trump in the final days of his presidency, when the time came reports suggested that their relationship had soured as a result of the alleged request for legal fees – with Mr Trump telling White House staff not to forward his calls. In response to the reports, Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller insisted the president believed Mr Giuliani was “a great guy and a patriot who devoted his services to the country”, adding: “We all love America’s Mayor”. Shortly afterwards, Mr Giuliani announced he would no longer be serving on Mr Trump’s impeachment team. The former president’s Senate trial on charges of inciting an insurrection is due to start on 8 February.
Dominion Builds Legal Behemoth to Drain Trumpland of Billions LAWYER UP! Dominion Voting Systems is adding a new team of lawyers as they prepare for their current lawsuits—and another potential round. https://www.thedailybeast.com/dominion-builds-legal-behemoth-to-drain-trumpland-of-billions With billions of dollars in lawsuits now in the balance, Dominion Voting Systems has quietly expanded its legal armada in recent days, as the election technology company goes after Trumpworld and conservative media giants. Clare Locke—the legal firm spearheading Dominion’s lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and pillow magnate Mike Lindell—recently brought in seven attorneys from the Texas-based firm of Susman Godfrey, which has experience litigating against the so-called “Kraken” suits filed by one-time Trump attorneys Lin Wood and Sidney Powell. “There are great synergies between the work that the Susman team had done on the 2020 election and the defamation cases we were pursuing for Dominion,” Tom Clare, from the notoriously aggressive law firm Clare Locke, told The Daily Beast. “As those discussions unfolded we also discovered the two firms have a great cultural similarity in having a ready for trial approach to litigation,” he added. “I think it's going to be a very effective team.” Dominion expanding its legal team is the latest effort to punish leading players in the months-long propaganda push to trash the company and baselessly assail the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential contest. On Friday, Fox News was hit with a $1.6 billion lawsuit. “Fox News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court,” a statement from the company said. Other conservative media outlets including Newsmax and One American News Network—also aired post election conspiracy theories and are among the top targets for Dominion’s next round of lawsuits, according to two people familiar with the matter. Justin Nelson—a Susman attorney who is assisting in Dominion’s defamation cases against Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, and Fox News—represented Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobb against a “Kraken” suit filed by Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and other attorneys against Arizona election officials in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state. That suit, which asked a judge to “set aside the results of the 2020 General Election,” included many of the false claims which Dominion says amounted to defamation, including the allegation that Dominion uses software from a separate voting technology company, Smartmatic, and that Dominion was "founded by foreign oligarchs and dictators to ensure computerized ballot-stuffing and vote manipulation" to install help Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez steal an election in the country. At the time, Nelson called the suit an “attack on democracy,” and argued that Wood, Powell, and others were “using the federal court system in an attempt to undermine the rule of law and obtain breathtaking, startling and unprecedented relief to overturn the will of the people.” Susman attorneys also have experience in litigating a number of high profile defamation cases. Davida Brook—who signed on to the case against Powell, Giuliani, and Lindell—previously represented Melanie Kohler, a Los Angeles woman who accused director Brett Ratner of rape in a since-deleted Facebook post. Brook represented Kohler after Ratner filed a defamation suit against her. Ratner subsequently withdrew his suit. Brook also represented actress Amber Heard, who was sued by ex-husband Johnny Depp after she wrote a Washington Post op-ed which Depp claimed had falsely implied he had "perpetrated domestic violence against her." Some of the targets or potential targets of Dominion’s legal wrath have run for cover, or even resorted to deleting articles or covering their tracks. Others have remained reliably defiant, claiming that a court battle and the discovery that comes with it would lead to humiliation for Dominion instead. Lindell—who was also a major financial backer of pro-Trump attempts to nullify President Biden’s decisive 2020 victory—previously told The Daily Beast that he’d hired private investigators to dig up “dirt” and any evidence of foreign entanglements on both Dominion and Smartmatic, and that he was hoping to file countersuits in the coming weeks. People familiar with the matter say that the company’s legal team still hadn’t ruled out going after ex-President Trump specifically, but that no final decision had been made yet on if they wanted to open up that can of worms on the former leader of the free world. During his time in office, Trump personally promoted the same kinds of conspiracy theories and lies that the voting-tech executives and their attorneys now claim substantially and groundlessly damaged their business and has put them in danger via numerous death threats. Former President Trump is still facing an avalanche of separate lawsuits, probes, and criminal investigations, including ones stemming from alleged sexual assault, his family-run business empire, the bloody Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and his broader anti-democratic efforts in the wake of the 2020 election. In recent months, Trump—who now no longer enjoys the legal protections that come with being president—has privately quipped that his enemies will be investigating and “suing me for the rest of my life.”
Dominion is setting the table to sue another "voting fraud" clown who pushed false claims... Dominion Voting Systems demand former state Sen. Colbeck retract voter fraud claims https://www.freep.com/story/news/lo...-state-colbeck-voter-fraud-claims/7078890002/ Dominion Voting Systems accused former state Sen. Patrick Colbeck of waging a "self-serving disinformation campaign" against the company and demanded he retract his claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, in a 14-page letter emailed Friday. Dominion provided voting technology to counties across the country, including 66 of Michigan’s 83, and it has been a central target among those claiming voter fraud. A loud ally of former President Donald Trump, Colbeck, who is from Canton, spoke publicly and in a 93-minute video, which received national attention for its claims. Now, he is rallying around Michigan with a PowerPoint, titled “Case for Michigan Decertification,” according to Dominion’s letter, and continuing to push claims of voter fraud targeting Dominion. "In light of the information that has long been known to you and is additionally set forth above, the only responsible thing for you to do at this point is to publicly and forcefully retract your false claims about Dominion and set the record straight regarding the fake evidence and fake experts you have put forward," Dominion wrote. Colbeck could not be reached for comment Saturday. The company has already filed suits against attorney Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Fox News Network, for their claims of electoral fraud. Dominion said in its letter that Colbeck cited “proven liars and discredited individuals,” including former Republican congressional candidate Russell Ramsland, Mellissa Carone and Josh Merritt, or Spyder, Powell's secret witness in voter fraud lawsuits. At the end of the letter, Dominion said that while it continued to ask Colbeck and others to retract their claims, the damage done is irreversible, and it expressly stated the right to sue. "Make no mistake — Dominion will hold you accountable for these lies," Dominion wrote.
Dominion: will one Canadian company bring down Trump's empire of disinformation? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-sidney-powell-giuliani-mike-lindell-lawsuits Dominion has filed defamation lawsuits against several Trump allies for pushing election ‘radioactive falsehoods’ – could it triumph? When Donald Trump and his allies pushed the “big lie” of voter fraud and a stolen election, it seemed nothing could stop them spreading disinformation with impunity. Politicians and activists’ pleas fell on deaf ears. TV networks and newspapers fact-checked in vain. Social media giants proved impotent. But now a little-known tech company, founded 18 years ago in Canada, has the conspiracy theorists running scared. The key: suing them for defamation, potentially for billions of dollars. “Libel laws may prove to be a very old mechanism to deal with a very new phenomenon of massive disinformation,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist. “We have all these fact checkers but lots of people don’t care. Nothing else seems to work, so maybe this will.” The David in this David and Goliath story is Dominion Voting Systems, an election machine company named after Canada’s Dominion Elections Act of 1920. Its main offices are in Toronto and Denver and it describes itself as the leading supplier of US election technology. It says it serves more than 40% of American voters, with customers in 28 states. But the 2020 election put a target on its back. As the White House slipped away and Trump desperately pushed groundless claims of voter fraud, his lawyers and cheerleaders falsely alleged Dominion had rigged the polls in favour of Joe Biden. Among the more baroque conspiracy theories was that Dominion changed votes through algorithms in its voting machines that were created in Venezuela to rig elections for the late dictator Hugo Chávez. It was laughable but also potentially devastating to Dominion’s reputation and ruinous to its business. It also fed a cocktail of conspiracy theories that fuelled Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January, as Congress moved to certify the election results. Five people died, including an officer of the Capitol police. The company is fighting back. It filed $1.3bn defamation lawsuits against Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, for pushing the allegations without evidence. Separately, Dominion’s security director, Eric Coomer, launched a suit against the Trump campaign, Giuliani, Powell and some conservative media figures and outlets, saying he had been forced into hiding by death threats. Then came the big one. Last month Dominion filed a $1.6bn defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, accusing it of trying to boost ratings by amplifying the bogus claims. “The truth matters,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Lies have consequences. Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process. If this case does not rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does.” The suit argues that Fox hosts and guests “took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire” by broadcasting wild assertions that Dominion systems changed votes and ignoring repeated efforts by the company to set the record straight. “Radioactive falsehoods” spread by Fox News will cost Dominion $600m over the next eight years, according to the lawsuit, and have resulted in Dominion employees being harassed and the company losing major contracts in Georgia and Louisiana. Fox fiercely disputes the charge. It said in a statement: “Fox News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.” Other conservative outlets have also raised objections. Chris Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax, said: “We think all of these suits are an infringement on press freedom as it relates to media organisations. There were the years of Russian collusion investigations when all of the major cable networks reported unsubstantiated claims. I think Fox was reporting the news and certainly Newsmax was.” But some observers believe Dominion has a strong case. Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said: “Dominion has an outstanding prospect in its litigation against Fox for the simple reason that Fox knowingly broadcast over and over again the most outrageous and clear lies. “Certainly there are protections under the first amendment and otherwise but this is so far outside the bounds, such a clear case, that I think Fox is looking at a very serious legal exposure here and that’s the way it should be. “You should not have a major television outlet that is able day after day to provide a megaphone for outrageous falsehoods having to do with the election, one that helped trigger a violent insurrection on 6 January. They should not be able to feed a steady stream of those pernicious lies into the body politic without any legal consequences.” ‘A real battleground’ Eisen, a former White House “ethics czar”, suggests that the Dominion case could provide at least one model for dealing with the war on truth. “The United States and the world need to deal with disinformation,” he said. “There can be no doubt that every method is going to be required but certainly libel law provides one very important vehicle for establishing consequences and while there’s no such thing as a guarantee when you go to court, this is an exceptionally high risk for Fox with a large price tag attached as well.” There are signs that the legal actions, and their grave financial implications, have got reckless individuals and outlets on the run. Powell asked a judge to throw out the lawsuit against her, arguing that her assertions were protected by the right to free speech. But she also offered the unusual defence that she had been exaggerating to make a point and that “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process”. Two days after voting machine maker Smartmatic filed a $2.7bn defamation suit that alleged TV host Lou Dobbs falsely accused it of election rigging, Fox Business abruptly canceled Lou Dobbs Tonight, its most viewed show. It has also filed a motion to dismiss the Smartmatic suit. Meanwhile pro-Trump outlets have begun using prepared disclaimers or prerecorded programmes to counter election conspiracy theories spouted by guests. When Lindell launched into an attack on Dominion on Newsmax in February, co-anchor Bob Sellers tried to cut him off and then walked off set. RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah, told the Washington Post: “We are seeing the way that libel has become a real battleground in the fight against disinformation. “The threat of massive damages for spreading probably false conspiracy theories on matters of public concern could turn out to be the one tool that is successful in disincentivising that behaviour, where so many other tools seem to have failed.” The defamation suits will provide another test of the judiciary as a pillar of American democracy. The courts’ independence proved robust regarding dozens of lawsuits by Trump and his allies seeking to overturn the election outcome. Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It is such an under-appreciated illumination of the multiple avenues for pursuing politics. Sometimes we get understandably absorbed by what Congress can do, which is obviously significant at times, but mostly fairly kind of deadlocked. “But we’re going to see the legal system prosecuting the 6 January perpetrators, prosecuting Donald Trump and prosecuting these libel charges by Dominion over the monstrous lies that were told after the election. “Thank goodness for the courts because the elected branches have really botched it.”