Dominion Voting says Fox News created a 'forest fire' by pushing election lies

Fox News has been hit with yet another massive lawsuit for peddling lies about fraud in the 2020 election.

Dominion Voting Systems on Friday sued the right-wing cable channel for $1.6 billion, alleging that Fox News knew the voting machine company did not engage in any fraud, yet peddled those lies because it was losing viewers to other far-right cable channels that were also telling those lies.

“Fox set out to lure viewers back — including President Trump himself — by intentionally and falsely blaming Dominion for President Trump’s loss by rigging the election,” Dominion said in the lawsuit.

The company’s complaint said, “Fox News took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire” by airing “fictions” and giving them “a prominence they otherwise never would have achieved.”

The lawsuit added, “The truth matters. Lies have consequences. Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process.”

This is now the second lawsuit Fox News faces for its lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election.

In February, Smartmatic USA sued Fox News and three of its hosts — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro — for $2.7 billion. Dobbs’ show was taken off the air by the network the day after the lawsuit was filed.

Ultimately, multiple recounts, audits, and reviews of the election found there was no fraud, and that voting machine companies like Dominion did not switch votes — as Trump and his GOP allies have alleged.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the 2020 election was the “most secure in American history.” Meanwhile, the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security released a joint report specifically debunking the claims that voting machine companies like Dominion switched votes from Trump to President Joe Biden.

After Dominion filed the lawsuit, Fox News issued a statement saying the outlet is “proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.”

However, Fox News in February aired a segment specifically fact-checking lies its own hosts had made about voter fraud.

The lies spread by Fox News hosts and contributors, as well as from Trump and other Republican lawmakers about voter fraud, have contributed to a massive GOP effort to suppress the vote in future elections.

Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed a voter suppression law that requires ID to vote by mail, limits the use of drop boxes to hand in absentee ballots, allows Republican state election officials to take over county election boards run by Democrats, and even makes it a crime to hand out food and drink to voters waiting in line to vote. That law is already being challenged in court.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.