WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Lawyers for an electronic voting company targeted by allies of former President Donald Trump and accused of rigging the 2020 presidential election asked a Delaware judge Thursday to rule in their favor in a defamation lawsuit against the conservative news outlet.
Florida-based Smartmatic sued Newsmax in 2021, alleging that the cable network’s hosts and guests made false and defamatory statements in the weeks after the election, alleging that Smartmatic was involved in rigging the results and that its software was used to change votes.
“Smartmatic was not involved in rigging the 2020 election, and its software was not used to change any votes,” Smartmatic’s attorney, J. Erik Connolly, told Superior Court Judge Eric Davis at the hearing.
Attorneys for Newsmax, also based in Florida, are asking Davis to rule in their favor before the trial, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 30 and last up to four weeks. The company claims it is only reporting on serious and newsworthy allegations made by Trump and his supporters about possible voter fraud.
The judge has said Florida’s defamation law applies to the case. Newsmax attorney Misha Tseytlin urged Davis to state that under Florida law, the “fair reporting” or “neutral reporting” privilege should protect Newsmax from liability.
“There is no evidence that we caused them harm,” Tseytlin said.
Davis did not rule on the competing summary judgment motions, instructing attorneys to continue preparing for trial while he considers the arguments.
The Delaware lawsuit is one of several stemming from reports by conservative news outlets since the 2020 election. Smartmatic is suing Fox News for defamation in New York and recently settled a lawsuit in the District of Columbia against One America News Network, another conservative outlet.
Dominion Voting Systems similarly filed several defamation suits against those who spread conspiracy theories and blamed its election equipment for Trump’s loss. Last year, in a case led by Davis, Fox News settled with Dominion for $787 million.
To win a defamation case against Newsmax, Smartmatic must prove that Newsmax officials acted with “actual malice” or “reckless disregard for the truth” in making false allegations of voter fraud.
Connolly, Smartmatic’s attorney, rejected the idea that Newsmax should escape liability by arguing that it engaged in fair or neutral reporting.
“These were not balanced, they were not neutral, they were not interested,” he said of the Newsmax reports.
Connolly argued that in the five weeks that 24 allegedly defamatory reports were broadcast, no one at Newsmax had any evidence to support allegations of widespread voter fraud by hosts and guests. He also noted that during the 2020 election, the company’s machines were only used in Los Angeles County, where Democrat Joe Biden won 71% of the vote.
“It makes it inherently unlikely that we rigged a national election,” Connolly said.
Newsmax attorney Tseytlin told Davis that there is no evidence that the network’s hosts or executives knew that statements by the likes of former New York mayor Rudy Guilian and conservative attorney Sidney Powell about voter fraud were false.
Instead, Tseytlin said Newsmax employees were trying to follow CEO Chris Ruddy’s directive that they should report fairly on issues of public interest, stressing that allegations of voter fraud have not been proven.
“Here is Chris Ruddy’s editorial decision that Newsmax was going to report serious allegations made by serious people,” he said.
In court papers, Newsmax described Smartmatic as a “struggling election technology company with a checkered history” that is using a legally unfounded and unconstitutional liability theory to try to pull off a huge upset.
Thursday’s hearing comes two weeks after a federal grand jury in Florida indicted three current and former Smartmatic executives in a scheme to pay more than $1 million in bribes to place voting machines in the Philippines.
Prosecutors allege that Smartmatic’s Venezuelan-born founder, Roger Piñate, conspired with others to bribe the chairman of the Philippine Election Commission using a slush fund created by overcharging for each voting machine it supplied to officials.
