Fox News secured a key victory this week for its defense in the defamation lawsuit filed against it by the electronic voting systems company Smartmatic. On Wednesday, a New York appeals court overturned a lower court ruling and granted the conservative cable news channel access to materials from the 2024 federal bribery indictment against several Smartmatic executives.
Then on Thursday, Fox filed a 156-page brief outlining its arguments for a summary judgment, following on an initial request it made May 1.
In August, three current and former Smartmatic executives, including the company’s co-founder and president Roger Piñate were charged in connection with an alleged bribery scheme in the Philippines.
According to the Justice Department, Piñate and a colleague funneled bribes of more than $1 million to the chairman of the Philippines’ electoral commission “to obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections.” All the defendants have pled not guilty and the company denies the accusations.
Fox has maintained that materials related to the indictment are necessary for its defense against the defamation suit, filed by Smartmatic over false claims of voter fraud and election rigging in 2020, spread by multiple Fox News hosts at the time.
In part, Fox argues that Smartmatic’s reputation was damaged more by its highly scrutinized dealings in foreign countries than by anything said on the network during the 2020 election period.
“We are pleased with the Court’s ruling that materials about Smartmatic executives’ indictments are ‘plainly relevant’ to its lack of damages. The factual evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News,” the network said in a statement 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.”
The filing also argues that any loss of new customers since 2024 would be due to the aforementioned indictment, that Smartmatic has not demonstrated proof of actual intent to harm it, and that the suit is without merit. You can read the full filing here.
The filing comes after Smartmatic, in a separate filing, accused Fox News and several top executives of deleting evidence pertaining to the lawsuit. About that, Fox representatives said in a statement, “Smartmatic is desperately attempting to distract from the court’s ruling for FOX and re-opening discovery into the federal indictment of key Smartmatic executives for bribery. FOX actually voluntarily disclosed the materials involved and this was resolved two years ago. FOX will shortly file a motion outlining Smartmatic’s intentional failure to preserve evidence, including direct written instructions by Smartmatic’s CEO to delete relevant text messages on the eve of filing this lawsuit.”
