{"id":855377,"date":"2025-06-13T22:11:56","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T03:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/13\/fox-news-granted-access-to-smartmatic-bribery-indictment-for-defamation-suit-defense\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T22:11:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T03:11:56","slug":"fox-news-granted-access-to-smartmatic-bribery-indictment-for-defamation-suit-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/13\/fox-news-granted-access-to-smartmatic-bribery-indictment-for-defamation-suit-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox News Granted Access to Smartmatic Bribery Indictment for Defamation Suit Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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<\/a> and granted the conservative cable news channel access to materials from the 2024 federal bribery indictment against several Smartmatic executives.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In August, three current and former Smartmatic executives, including the company\u2019s co-founder and president Roger Pi\u00f1ate were charged in connection with an alleged bribery scheme in the Philippines<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0Justice Department<\/a>, Pi\u00f1ate and a colleague funneled bribes of more than $1 million to the chairman of the Philippines\u2019 electoral commission \u201cto obtain and retain business related to providing voting machines and election services for the 2016 Philippine elections.\u201d All the defendants have pled not guilty and the company denies the accusations.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In part, Fox argues that Smartmatic\u2019s reputation was damaged more by its highly scrutinized dealings in foreign countries than by anything said on the network during the 2020 election period.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are pleased with the Court\u2019s ruling that materials about Smartmatic executives\u2019 indictments are \u2018plainly relevant\u2019 to its lack of damages. The factual evidence shows that Smartmatic\u2019s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump\u2019s lawyers on Fox News,\u201d the network said in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fox\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Meanwhile on Thursday, the company\u2019s summary judgment brief, filed with the New York Supreme Court, argued among other things that Smartmatic\u2019s business had already \u201ccratered\u201d before the 2020 election and that audited financial statements show \u201cno profit record to serve as a basis for projecting millions of dollars in future profits.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cSmartmatic is desperately\u00a0attempting\u00a0to distract from the court\u2019s ruling for\u00a0FOX\u00a0and re-opening discovery into the federal indictment of key Smartmatic executives for bribery.\u00a0FOX\u00a0actually voluntarily disclosed the materials involved and this was resolved two years ago.\u00a0FOX will\u00a0shortly file\u00a0a motion outlining Smartmatic\u2019s intentional failure to preserve evidence, including direct written instructions by Smartmatic\u2019s CEO to delete relevant text messages\u00a0on the eve of filing this lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Cassie\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":855378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4397,3197],"tags":[10147,18269],"class_list":{"0":"post-855377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-access","8":"category-granted","9":"tag-access","10":"tag-granted"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}