Smartmatic, Newsmax Settle Defamation Case on Eve of Trial (1)

Smartmatic Corp. settled its defamation lawsuit against Newsmax Media Inc. over broadcasts claiming that the voting technology company rigged the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump, resolving the matter days before a jury trial was set to begin.

Court officials in Delaware announced the settlement on Thursday without saying how much Newsmax will pay Smartmatic, which had been seeking at least $400 million in damages over alleged harm to its reputation. Newsmax had argued the damages sought by Smartmatic were wildly overblown.

Another voting machine company that was falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election, Dominion Voting Systems Inc., settled a similar suit last year against Fox News just as a trial was about to start. In that case, Fox agreed to pay Dominion $788 million without admitting wrongdoing.

Smartmatic filed the suit in 2021 as part of a wave of complaints against Trump allies and conservative outlets that repeated the claims. The settlement, six weeks before voters decide whether to return Trump to the White House, avoids a public rehashing of claims of fraud, which have widely been debunked in court as well as by Republican election officials.

A spokesperson for Smartmatic said the company was “pleased to have secured the completion of the case” and that the company “will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable.”

A spokesperson for Newsmax said the company was “pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement.”

Fox still faces a separate defamation suit by Smartmatic in New York, where a judge in January denied the media company’s request to toss out the case. That suit, in which Smartmatic seeks as much as a $2.7 billion in damages, is expected to go to trial in New York next year.

The development comes weeks after the president of Smartmatic was indicted for allegedly conspiring with two other executives to pay a $1 million bribe to win a contract for the 2016 Philippines election. The criminal case is unrelated to the Newsmax lawsuit, but the outlet argued that the jury should hear about the indictment anyway.

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Smartmatic’s case against Newsmax focused on the media outlet’s reporting that Smartmatic conspired with Dominion Voting Systems to rig the 2020 election. Supporters of Trump – including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell – said on air that Smartmatic’s software was used to flip millions of votes from Trump to Joe Biden.

Read More: Georgia Poll Workers Seek Sanctions Against Giuliani in Suit

Trump’s backers also alleged on Newsmax shows that Smartmatic had ties to Venezuela’s socialist leaders, including the late former president Hugo Chavez and that its software was designed to allow company technicians to manipulate results.

Smartmatic has denied ever having ties to Venezuela. The company has election operations around the globe but only handled voting in Los Angeles County during the 2020 election.

The case is Smartmatic USA v. Newsmax Media Inc, N21C-11-028-EMD, Delaware Superior Court (Wilmington).

Read More: Fox News Sued by Target of Popular Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory

(Updates with detail on the litigation starting in paragraph 2.)

--With assistance from Christopher Palmeri.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net;
Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware at jfeeley@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth

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