On Monday, Fox News Media decided to file a motion to dismiss the $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed by voting technology company Smartmatic.
In this motion to dismiss, Fox is claiming Smartmatic’s lawsuit endeavors to “stifle debate and chill vital First Amendment activities.”
Paul Clement, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis who served as solicitor general under former President George W. Bush, will represent Fox News in this matter, and filed the motion on the network’s behalf.
“The suit strikes at the heart of the First Amendment,” Clement said in a statement. “Smartmatic’s theory is fundamentally incompatible with the reality of the modern news network and deeply rooted in free speech law.”
In its court filing Monday, Fox News stated “Smartmatic has not identified any statement by Fox itself that could be actionable by defamation,” later adding, “The logic of Smartmatic’s position would be that the press must censor all discussion of even the most newsworthy of public controversies to escape imputation of actual malice, even in the context of statements by objectively newsworthy third parties during live television interviews.”
The network added that Smartmatic’s lawsuit is just plain “meritless.”
“Fox News has moved to dismiss the Smartmatic lawsuit because it is meritless. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that Fox cannot be held liable for fair reporting and commenting on competing allegations in a hotly contested election. We are proud of our election coverage which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism.”
In a 285-page lawsuit filed in New York State court last week, Smartmatic alleged that Fox News Media and a number of its opinion hosts – including Lou Dobbs (whose show was canceled this past Friday), Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo – intentionally lied about the company in an effort to mislead the public into the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump. Smartmatic is saying that its reputation has been “irreparably harmed” by the network, 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.
“We have no choice,” Smartmatic founder and CEO Antonio Mugica told CNN’s Oliver Darcy after deciding to file the lawsuit last week. “The disinformation campaign that was launched against us is an obliterating one. For us, this is existential, and we have to take action.”