Fox News achieved a significant win this week in its defense against a defamation lawsuit brought by Smartmatic, an electronic voting systems company.
On Tuesday “Smartmatic’s dreams of a big settlement payday from Fox News suffered a big blow when a New York judge ordered the company to produce real evidence it suffered any actual economic harm from the allegedly disparaging remarks made by on-air Fox News talent after the 2020 elections.”
On Wednesday, a New York appeals court reversed a lower court decision, granting Fox access to materials from a 2024 federal bribery indictment involving several Smartmatic executives.
On Thursday, Fox filed a 156-page brief supporting its May 1 motion for summary judgment.
In August 2024, three Smartmatic executives, including co-founder and president Roger Piñate, were indicted for an alleged bribery scheme in the Philippines. The Justice Department claims Piñate and a colleague paid over $1 million in bribes to the Philippines’ electoral commission chairman to secure and maintain business for the 2016 Philippine elections. All defendants have pleaded not guilty, and Smartmatic denies the allegations.
Fox argues that the indictment materials are critical to its defense against Smartmatic’s lawsuit, which stems from false 2020 election fraud claims aired by Fox News hosts. The network contends that Smartmatic’s reputation was primarily harmed by its controversial foreign dealings, not by Fox’s 2020 election coverage.
“We are pleased with the Court’s ruling that materials about Smartmatic executives’ indictments are ‘plainly relevant’ to its lack of damages. The evidence shows Smartmatic’s business and reputation were suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News,” Fox stated Wednesday.
On Thursday, Fox filed a 156-page brief supporting its May 1 motion for summary judgment.
Fox argues that the indictment materials are critical to its defense against Smartmatic’s lawsuit, which stems from false 2020 election fraud claims aired by Fox News hosts. The network contends that Smartmatic’s reputation was primarily harmed by its controversial foreign dealings, not by Fox’s 2020 election coverage.
“We are pleased with the Court’s ruling that materials about Smartmatic executives’ indictments are ‘plainly relevant’ to its lack of damages. The evidence shows Smartmatic’s business and reputation were suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News,” Fox stated Wednesday.
Meanwhile on Thursday, the company’s summary judgment brief, filed with the New York Supreme Court, argued among other things that Smartmatic’s business had already “cratered” before the 2020 election and that audited financial statements show “no profit record to serve as a basis for projecting millions of dollars in future profits.”
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