A manufacturer of voting systems has filed lawsuits against two conservative news outlets and a prominent Trump supporter alleging that they peddled false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election for profit at the company's expense.
Dominion filed lawsuits Tuesday against One America News Network (OAN), Newsmax and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com. The company is seeking $1.6 billion from each party.
The three suits are the latest in a series of lawsuits filed by Dominion against conservative media staples and allies of President Donald Trump.
Hosts and guests on OAN and Newsmax frequently pushed disproven conspiracies about Dominion machines flipping votes from Trump to Biden in the 2020 election. In its lawsuit, Dominion claims that hosts and staffers at both networks knowingly pushed false information as a "business opportunity" to boost ratings.
"We are suing to set the record straight, to vindicate Dominion's rights, to hold the defendants accountable, and to recover damages for the devastating economic harm done to Dominion's business," the company's legal counsel, Stephen Shackelford, told USA Today.
In fact, the OAN lawsuit opens with a quote from one of the network's former producers, Marty Golingan, who told The New York Times in April that the majority of staffers at the network did not believe the claims of widespread voter fraud.
"A lot of people said, 'This is insane, and maybe if they sue us, we'll stop putting stories like this out,'" Golingan told the Times.
In a statement to USA Today, Newsmax said that Dominion's lawsuit was "a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press."
In its lawsuit against Byrne, Dominion alleged that he worked with other Trump allies like lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to "manufacture(d) and promote fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen."
The lawsuit also alleges that Bryne "bankrolled" several conspiracy theories and efforts to overturn the election results.
There is no evidence to support the claims that widespread voter fraud led to President Joe Biden's victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Former attorney general Bill Barr, along with cybersecurity officials in the Trump administration, reported late last year that they had not found evidence to support the claims and that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history.
In addition to the three lawsuits filed Tuesday, Dominion has also filed suit against the Trump campaign, Giuliani, Powell, Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Fox News.
