Smartmatic said in the complaint that promoting false claims against Fox “put its” multi-billion dollar business pipeline “at risk; damaged its options technology and software business; and made it difficult for the company to do new business in the United States, where it had made headway after years of running elections in other countries.
Fox declined to comment before seeing the suit. Ms. Bartiromo, Mr. Dobbs, Ms. Pirro, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell did not immediately respond to the request for comments.
In his head-on assault on Mr. Murdoch’s media empire, Smartmatic argues that Fox portrayed it as the villain in a fictional narrative designed to help win back Newsmax and OANN viewers. In the weeks following the election, ratings soared on the assumption that Mr Biden was not the rightful winner. Smartmatic’s lawsuit also argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell tried to enrich themselves and improve their standing with Mr. Trump’s supporters by making allegations that harm the company.
The Fox Corporation with around 9,000 employees is managed by Mr. Murdoch (89) and his older son Lachlan, its managing director. $ 2.7 billion would be a heavy penalty for the company. Fox Corporation posted pre-tax profits of $ 3 billion on sales of $ 12.3 billion from September 2019 to September last year. The value is around 17.8 billion US dollars.
Smartmatic’s complaint takes into account not only the reputational and financial damage the company has sustained, but also the damage the US has suffered from the claims of Mr. Trump’s allies and the Murdoch-controlled networks he has long favored have done.
Mr. Dobbs, a presenter for the Fox Business Network, and Ms. Bartiromo, who hosts shows on Fox Business and Fox News, were staunch supporters of the former president. On November 29, Ms. Bartiromo conducted Mr. Trump’s first long television interview since the election. Ms. Pirro, a former prosecutor whose “Justice with Judge Jeanine” is an integral part of the Saturday night cast of Fox New, has been friends with Mr. Trump for decades.
Among the on-air exchanges, the highlights of the Smartmatic suit are one between Ms. Powell and Mr. Dobbs on November 16. Ms. Powell claimed on Mr. Dobbs’ show that Hugo Chávez, the late President of Venezuela, was involved in the creation of Smartmatic technology, which is designed so that the voices she is processing can be changed undetected. (Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013, had nothing to do with Smartmatic.)
