Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who they say carried out “a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion” comprised of “demonstrably false” allegations, according to the New York Times.
The 107-page lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Washington seeks damages of over $1.3 billion, and is based on over 50 statements made by Giuliani at legislative hearings, on Twitter, in the conservative news media, and on his podcast, where he accused Dominion of participating in a plot to flip votes to Joe Biden.
Mr. Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers and confidants, has faced continuing fallout for his highly visible efforts to reverse the election outcome. This month, the chairman of the New York State Senate’s judiciary committee formally requested that the state court system strip Mr. Giuliani of his law license.
Taken together with a lawsuit the company filed this month against Sidney Powell, another lawyer who was allied with Mr. Trump, the suit represents a point-by-point rebuke of one of the more outlandish conspiracy theories surrounding last year’s election. The president’s allies had contended that the voting machine company — which was also used in states during Mr. Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, has been tested by government agencies, and was used in states Mr. Trump carried in 2020 — was somehow involved in a rigged election, partly as a result of ties to a long-deceased Venezuelan dictator. –New York Times
“Dominion was not founded in Venezuela to fix elections for Hugo Chávez,” reads the suit. “It was founded in 2002 in John Poulos’s basement in Toronto to help blind people vote on paper ballots.”
The vote counting company also noted that for all of Giuliani’s comments about Dominion in the public domain, he’s never mentioned them in court, which would have opened him up to legal ramifications.
“Notably, not a single one of the three complaints signed and filed by Giuliani and other attorneys for the Trump Campaign in the Pennsylvania action contained any allegations about Dominion,” reads the lawsuit, which then linked Giuliani’s statements to the Capitol ‘riot’ on Jan. 6.
“Having been deceived by Giuliani and his allies into thinking that they were not criminals — but patriots ‘Defend[ing] the Republic’ from Dominion and its co-conspirators — they then bragged about their involvement in the crime on social media,” the suit states.
Thomas A. Clare, a lawyer representing Dominion, said that the riot had not factored into the decision to sue Mr. Giuliani, but that it did show just how seriously Mr. Trump’s followers had taken the falsehoods told about the election.
“From a defamation law perspective, it just demonstrates the depth to which these statements sink in to people,” Mr. Clare said in an interview. “That people don’t just read them and tune them out. It goes to the core of their belief system, which puts them in a position to take action in the real world.” –New York Times
Dominion is the second largest manufacturer of voting machine equipment in the United States.
More lawsuits on the way?
Dominion says they aren’t stopping at Giuliani, who they say acted in concert with other prominent conservatives and networks – such as Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax, One America News Network, Lou Dobbs and Mike Lindell.
“There will certainly be others,” said Clare. “There are other individuals who have spoken the big lie and have put forward these defamatory statements about Dominion, but then there are also players in the media that have amplified it.”
Could Dominion even sue Trump?
“We’re not ruling anybody out,” said Clare. “Obviously, this lawsuit against the president’s lawyer moves one step closer to the former president and understanding what his role was and wasn’t.”
Earlier this month, the American Thinker published an Dominion-approved apology note for publishing reports about the company, which they said in a statement are “completely false and have no basis in fact,” adding “it was wrong for us to publish these false statements.” The website concurrently disabled its comments section, saying in a statement “Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.”