Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and three of its popular anchors are the targets of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed on Thursday by a company that became a prominent subject of discredited theories about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Smartmatic, an election technology company, filed the suit in New York State Supreme Court against the Fox Corporation, Fox News, and the anchors Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. As part of the same action, the company is suing Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who made the case for election fraud as guests on Fox programs while representing President Donald J. Trump.
Here's the introduction to the lawsuit, a tour de force of shade (pdf):
1. The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.
2. Defendants have always known these facts. They knew Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 U.S. election. They knew the election was not stolen. They knew the election was not rigged or fixed. They knew these truths just as they knew the Earth is round and two plus two equals four.
3. Defendants did not want Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to win the election. They wanted President Donald Trump and Vice President Michael Pence to win re-election. Defendants were disappointed. But they also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story. Defendants decided to tell people that the election was stolen from President Trump and Vice President Pence.
4. Defendants had an obvious problem with their story. They needed a villain. Theyneeded someone to blame. They needed someone whom they could get others to hate. A story of 2 good versus evil, the type that would incite an angry mob, only works if the storyteller provides the audience with someone who personifies evil.
5. Without any true villain, Defendants invented one. Defendants decided to make Smartmatic the villain in their story...
There will be a heavy cost to these enemies of our democracy -- bet on it.
The schadenfreude is sweet, and will only get sweeter.
