Bad press for Smartmatic and its executives could seriously hurt its claim to have been defamed by Fox News.
You may recall that Smartmatic has a defamation case against Fox News similar to that of Dominion Voting Systems, the voting technology company that settled with Fox for a whopping $787.5 million last year over the network’s lies about the 2020 election. But Smartmatic is suing for more: $2.7 billion, compared to Dominion’s $1.6 billion. Also, while Dominion settled without an apology or retraction, Smartmatic’s lawyer said, not long after the Dominion settlement, that his client would require both.
After reading a Politico article today, I’m thinking Smartmatic’s retraction and apology are a whole lot less likely.
The article, titled “His Lawsuit Could Devastate Fox News — If He Survives the PR Battle” reveals there’s quite a PR battle to overcome.
To combat a smear based on lies, the CEO of the voting-machine firm Smartmatic may have to lean into a totally different set of ugly stories — involving alleged corporate bribery, ties to a foreign strongman and his own role in a threesome-hookup app called Feeld.
…
[T]he thing about defamation suits is that they’re premised on the idea that the plaintiff actually has a good name that can be besmirched. And that premise, in turn, encourages unfriendly parties to air dirty laundry ahead of trial.
[Smartmatic CEO Antonio] Mugica’s PR team knows this, which is surely how I found myself talking to him last month not just about election sanctity, but about cringier subjects he’d rather avoid: That bribery case; those alleged ties to his country’s autocratic late president Hugo Chavez; and Mugica’s personal views on sexual monogamy and what they have to do with his dating app investments, among other things.
On paper, they seem awfully far afield from the question of whether a news organization devastated Mugica’s business via defamatory lies about the 2020 U.S. election. In the real world, it’s a different story.
I suggest you read the full article if you want details on the bribery case, the threesome app or ties to Hugo Chavez. I'll just say they don't help Smartmatic's case.
More importantly, what those details signify to me is that this case will likely settle. Politico notes Smartmatic’s litigation could cost “upwards of $100 million” and that billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman recently made a “multimillion-dollar investment” in the company. Politico also notes that Smartmatic recently made a confidential settlement with pro-Trump Newsmax after a judge ruled against punitive damages. That was a different case in a different jurisdiction but still…
Yes, I’d love to see Fox News financially devastated. But I care more about demolishing election lies, disinformation and coup-promoting propaganda. That's why I think a fulsome apology and major retraction are so important. Maybe Smartmatic will hold out for them. But I'm a lot less optimistic than I was last year.
The last paragraph of the Politico article puts the stakes in stark relief:
“We’ve participated in elections in, I think, 37 countries, many of them in the developing world — immature democracies, or whatever you want to call them,” Mugica said. “Like Venezuela, which is not a democracy anymore. Or the Philippines or Kenya, places that are definitely at a different stage in their democracies and in their socioeconomic development. And I think what’s been happening in the U.S. recently, and more specifically with the last election, was kind of a regression into that stage. So the U.S. has basically behaved as if it was any other developing country on the political front.”
This is what Fox News and its Trump lackeys want: to destroy our democracy.
The best thing you can do is to vote. Make sure to vote for every single candidate who supports democracy up and down the ballot. If you're not yet registered to vote go here to start the process.
(Image by mroach from Malmö, Sweden, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, slightly cropped)
