Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani for Defamation

Last updated on January 27th, 2021 at 04:53 am

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, alleging he defamed the company by continuing to push the lie that the election was stolen.

The 107-page lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court in Washington and seeks damages of more than $1.3 billion. It cites more than 50 statements Giuliani “made at legislative hearings, on Twitter, on his podcast and in the conservative news media, where he spun a fictitious narrative of a plot by one of the biggest voting machine manufacturers in the country to flip votes to President Biden,” according to The New York Times.

Thomas A. Clare, a lawyer representing Dominion, said the recent Capitol insurrection did not factor into the decision to sue Giuliani, though he acknowledged it shows how far people have taken their beliefs that the election was compromised despite all evidence to the contrary.

“From a defamation law perspective, it just demonstrates the depth to which these statements sink in to people,” Clare told The New York Times. “That people don’t just read them and tune them out. It goes to the core of their belief system, which puts them in a position to take action in the real world.”

Giuliani isn’t the only member of Trump’s inner circle to face legal action from Dominion.

Earlier this month, Dominion sued lawyer Sidney Powell for pushing blatantly false claims about the election, including that Dominion machines were compromised. Dominion says it has been the victim of a “viral disinformation campaign” that Powell mounted “to financially enrich herself, to raise her public profile, and to ingratiate herself to Donald Trump.”

The claim that Dominion voting machines were compromised in some way has already been debunked.  A statement posted last month by the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), part of a joint statement from the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees, revealed the agencies found “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The statement went on to refer to the 2020 general election as “the most secure in American history.” 

These facts did not stop former President Trump from urging his Twitter followers to watch a broadcast from Fox News host Sean Hannity that gave still more air time to the Dominion conspiracy theory, which originated from the pro-Trump One America News Network (OANN).

OANN claimed, citing “data analysis” and without providing any clear evidence, that Dominion “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.” A New York Times investigation found that there were explanations for voting irregularities in cases in Michigan and Georgia that involved Dominion software.

“The Dominion software was used in only two of the five counties that had problems in Michigan and Georgia, and in every instance there was a detailed explanation for what had happened. In all of the cases, software did not affect the vote counts,” the Times reported.

The outlet went on to note that “In the two Michigan counties that had mistakes, the inaccuracies were because of human errors, not software problems, according to the Michigan Department of State, county officials and election-security experts. Only one of the two Michigan counties used Dominion software.”

Issues in three Georgia counties “had other explanations,” they continued. “In one county, an apparent problem with Dominion software delayed officials’ reporting of the vote tallies, but did not affect the actual vote count. In two other counties, a separate company’s software slowed poll workers’ ability to check-in voters.”

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Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.

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