The last remaining conservative anchors at Faux News just had their noses publicly rubbed in what appears to be inaccurate reporting. The network got slammed by Smartmatic, so they had to walk back all their unverified claims. These days, with all the fact checkers, you have to dot every “i” and cross every “t” or they call it fake, unless liberals write it. Progressives get away with anything they choose to make up.
Fake news on Fox, or is it?
On Friday, Fox talking head Lou Dobbs was forced to air a humiliating retraction.
Several of the station’s news personalities will be compelled to air an identical segment which, according to reports, amounts to “a fact-checking refutation of claims that he and guests have made about an election tech company Smartmatic and its role in the 2020 presidential election.” Smartmatic forced them to do it and will probably still sue the network anyway.
Judge Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo got dinged as well. At least Judge Jeanine won’t have to sit through her punishment clip. She’s off for the holidays and Lisa Boothe will air the video.
Smartmatic and their lawyers “threatened legal action against Fox News, Newsmax and One America,” for “publishing false and defamatory statements.”
They aren’t happy that the news outlets have “pushed claims of election fraud, including unfounded conspiracy theories of rigged voting machine companies.”
They took on Sidney Powell too, and she fed them to her Kraken, hiring defamation attorney Lin Wood to represent her in court. He fired a letter off to Smartmatic telling them he saw their argument and he’s not impressed, so bring it on. “I have carefully reviewed your letter of December 15, 2020. I am not impressed. Ms. Powell retracts nothing. File your lawsuit.”
Knowing my background & experience in defamation law, Sidney @SidneyPowell1 asked me to represent her & respond to SmartMatic litigation threat.
Since everything Sidney is saying about election fraud is documented TRUTH, my response to SmartMatic was simple & to the point. pic.twitter.com/bWvhBXmtsi
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) December 20, 2020
Smartmatic isn’t Dominion
The demand letters which Smartmatic used to intimidate the news networks claimed, “these organizations could have easily discovered the falsity of the statements and implications made about Smartmatic by investigating their statements before publishing them to millions of viewers and readers.”
Smartmatic insists they were “limited to working on Los Angeles County’s publicly owned voting system, even though anchors and guests have advanced claims that it had a much greater role.”
The segment that news anchors are forced to air features Eddie Perez, global director of technology development and open standard for the Open Source Election Technology Institute.
An off camera host asks “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the U.S. in this election?” He dutifully denies everything. The segment ends with his observation that Dominion and Smartmatic are “two completely separate companies.”
The problem with all of that is the fact that it’s intentional misdirection. The news networks wouldn’t have gotten in so much trouble if they had sharpened the edge of their scalpel a little. For instance, there never was any kind of legal paper trail to connect Smartmatic to Dominion.
The connection isn’t on paper. Dominion Voting Systems sort of “evolved” out of Smartmatic and uses a lot of the same programming and engineering concepts. The engineers for Smartmatic also allegedly worked, later, for Dominion. Taking the shortcut and saying that Smartmatic and Dominion are linked isn’t good enough for fact checkers. The public can’t wait to see what the Kraken does to Smartmatic’s arrogant attorneys.
