After a New York state judge denied its motion to dismiss a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, Fox News filed four separate answers in the case: Fox News, Fox Corp, Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs.
Smartmatic has alleged that Dobbs, Pirro and Bartiromo have intentionally lied about the company to mislead the public into the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Trump. Smartmatic has said that its reputation has been “irreparably harmed” by the rhetoric from Dobbs, Pirro and Bartiromo, along with Trump’s personal attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, when they falsely deemed the company responsible for rigging election results against President Trump.
In the counterclaim, Fox News wrote: “This lawsuit strikes at the heart of the news media’s First Amendment mission and right to inform on matters of public interest. Not only is Smartmatic advancing novel defamation theories that lack any grounding in law, but Smartmatic’s staggering damages claim is divorced from reality and serves no apparent purpose other than to generate speech-chilling headlines.”
The hundreds of pages of response documents include denials of liability and writing that $2.7 billion is an “extravagant” number that is “divorced from reality.”
“Yet by Smartmatic’s telling, it stood to make nearly $2 billion in annual revenue in 2025—a figure more than four times its highest reported revenues within the past nine years and more than 16 times its reported revenues in 2020,” the counterclaim reads, citing figures from Daniel R. Fischel, an expert hired by Fox News’ law firm.
In the motion to dismiss, filed in February 2021, Fox News cited the First Amendment, saying it was just presenting all sides of the election debate and interviewing people in the news to present information of value to its audience.