Judge questions Fox News bid to shake Smartmatic's $2.7 bln election lawsuit
WASHINGTON, Aug 17 (Reuters) - A judge on Tuesday appeared skeptical of an effort by Fox Corp to dismiss a $2.7 billion lawsuit alleging Fox News hosts and guests made defamatory claims about the voting technology firm Smartmatic during the network's coverage of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
During a virtual oral argument, New York state judge David Cohen made comments sympathetic to Smartmatic, a small company that sued Fox and two of Donald Trump's former lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, after the attorneys falsely accused it of rigging votes against the former president.
The judge questioned whether there was any basis whatsoever for claims Powell and Giuliani made about Smartmatic on Fox's airwaves, like that the company was banned in Texas.
"How is that not defamatory?," the judge said. "Did any evidence ever come to light that Smartmatic was banned in Texas?"
The judge asked whether former Fox News host Lou Dobbs ever attempted to ascertain proof of this claim.
Fox Corp lawyer Paul Clement responded that those allegations were made during an interview Dobbs conducted with Giuliani, and that Fox News had a constitutional right to report on newsworthy claims made by Trump's lawyers.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/judge-questions-fox-news-bid-155737244.html
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Lou Dobbs Complains ‘Actual Proof’ of Election Fraud Is Too Hard to Find
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lou-dobbs-complains-actual-proof-of-election-fraud-is-too-hard-to-find
During his Fox Business broadcast Monday evening, Trump loyalist Lou Dobbs inadvertently told on himself when he asked why there is still no concrete evidence that proves the 2020 election was stolen from the outgoing president.
“Eight weeks from the election, and we still don’t have verifiable, tangible support for the crimes that everyone knows were committed,” Dobbs said. “That is, defrauding other citizens who voted with fraudulent votes. We know that’s the case in Nevada, we know it’s the case in Pennsylvania and a number of other states, but we have had a devil of a time finding actual proof. Why?”
