Smartmatic's defamation lawsuit against Newsmax is headed to trial. What's at stake?

The 2024 presidential election is approaching, but the legal battle over how the 2020 race was covered by right-wing channel Newsmax isn't going away quietly.

On Sept. 30, Newsmax will head into a Delaware court to defend itself against a defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, a voting machine technology company. Smartmatic says its reputation was damaged by false statements made on the network regarding voter fraud allegations in the 2020 presidential election.

Smartmatic's suit says Newsmax provided a platform for its hosts, Donald Trump and the former president's attorneys and allies to falsely claim that the company's software was manipulated to deliver the election for President Biden.

Smartmatic's equipment was used only in Los Angeles County in 2020 and not in any of the swing states that helped decide the election.

The claims were given ample airtime on Newsmax despite a lack of credible evidence of fraud and a complete rejection of Trump's legal challenges in the courts. Smartmatic says it lost business because of the bogus statements.

"Newsmax’s own people repeatedly and intentionally lied to the public," Smartmatic attorney Erik Connolly said. "This trial will allow the American judicial process to finally hold Newsmax accountable for knowingly peddling lies about Smartmatic."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_Voting_Systems

Sequoia Voting Systems was a California-based company that was one of the largest providers of electronic voting systems in the U.S., having offices in Oakland, Denver and New York City. Some of its major competitors were Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) and Election Systems & Software.

On 8 March 2005, Sequoia was acquired by Smartmatic, founded by three Venezuelan software engineers. In November 2007, following a verdict by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Smartmatic was ordered to sell Sequoia, which it did to its Sequoia managers having U.S. citizenship.

On 4 June 2010, certain assets were acquired by the Canadian company Dominion Voting Systems . At the time it had contracts for 300 jurisdictions in 16 states through its BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight, InsightPlus and 400C systems.[1]

In February 2014, Sequoia filed a bankruptcy petition under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.[2]

Dominion is a Canadian company.

How smart do you need to be to know you do not want a Canadian or Venezuelan company controlling American election results?

Newsmax was sued because they reported what Guiliani was saying about Smartmatic, as well as reporting what Smartmatic claimed in response. If simply reporting what people are saying is reason for a defamation suit, then all of the MSM should be sued into oblivion for reporting what 51 intelligence assets claimed about Hunter Biden’s laptop. And everything else they’ve reported that has turned out to be false (IOW, everything they’ve ever reported.

Digging into what Guiliani claimed. I don’t have time to dig farther right now so I’ll just go by what Wikipedia has. Wikipedia is leftist so if even they acknowledge these things then the truth is probably even more against Smartmatic.

At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartmatic it says: “Smartmatic was the subject of accusations of fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 United States presidential election, notably promoted by the personal attorney to President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, who asserted the company was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez and that it owned and provided software to a related company, Dominion Voting Systems. “

At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_Voting_Systems:

“After losing money for several years, on March 8, 2005, Sequoia was acquired by Smartmatic, a multi-national technology company founded by three Venezuelan software engineers, which had developed advanced election systems, including voting machines. Smartmatic machines and software were used in the 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum, which resulted in two studies, an exit poll[12] and cluster analysis,[13] indicating “massive fraud” that flipped the result in favor of dictator Hugo Chávez.

In November 2007, following a verdict by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Smartmatic was ordered to sell Sequoia, which it did to its Sequoia managers having U.S. citizenship.[14]”

.......”In April 2008, competitor Hart InterCivic attempted a hostile takeover of Sequoia.[24] Court documents unearthed at this time revealed that Smartmatic still retained some financial control over several aspects of Sequoia. At the time, Smartmatic held a $2 million note from SVS Holdings, Inc., the management team which purchased the company from Smartmatic. In accordance to the acquisition contract, Smartmatic also retains ownership of intellectual property rights for some of Sequoia’s currently deployed election products in the United States, and holds the right to negotiate overseas non-compete agreements. ......

On June 4, 2010, Dominion Voting Systems, a Canadian company engaged in manufacturing electronic voting hardware and optical scanners, acquired all physical and intellectual assets of Sequoia Voting Systems as well as retained technical and sales staff.[27]”

Smartmatic was not officially founded by Hugo Chavez (although there was a consortium involved in its founding which included the Venezuelan govt under Chavez) but even Wikipedia acknowledges that it was used to cheat Chavez into office. Thus, the software that Smartmatic created was created in such a way to allow election fraud. That software was bought by the hardware manufacturer Dominion, and the combination of Dominion’s machines and software created by Smartmatic was likely used in many of the swing states where fraud is alleged. Smartmatic denies that but at
https://skagitrepublicans.com/troublingforeigntiesbehindvotingmachinesusedinus it gives a complete history (including the deep concern by many democrats regarding Smartmatic, the ties between Sequoiya, Smartmatic, and Dominion, and CIA sources saying that China, Iran, and Russia are involved with Smartmatic in their efforts to subvert US elections and that Smartmatic can see in real time how many votes they need to flip and has the ability to flip them). It reports on what Dominion USED to say on their website:
>>>>>>
“According to a Dominion statement that has since been all but scrubbed from the internet, aside from a file saved by journalist Brad Friedman, the company announced on June 4, 2010, that it had “acquired the assets of Sequoia Voting Systems, a major U.S. provider of voting solutions serving nearly 300 jurisdictions in 16 states.”

“As part of the transaction, Dominion has acquired Sequoia’s inventory and all intellectual property, including software, firmware and hardware, for Sequoia’s precinct and central count optical scan and DRE voting solutions, including BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight, InsightPlus and 400C systems,” the release states.
>>>>>

There have also been lawsuits between Dominion and Smartmatic where they each claim the other is interfering with their stuff. But officially they claim they have no connections.

This is a deep rabbit hole and I’m running out of time. But there is much more to this story, and Smartmatic truly does need to be asked how the heck they were able to turn a 2-to-1 victory by Martinez into a win for Maduro. Smartmatic even openly admitted that one of Chavez’s elections had a million more votes in the result than there actually were.
If I’m not mistaken, Smart

Even democrats knew this before the 2020 election.

From https://skagitrepublicans.com/troublingforeigntiesbehindvotingmachinesusedinus :

“After deciding that Indra’s voting machines weren’t “flexible” enough, Chávez contacted Smartmatic, according to the official. Smartmatic says that Chavez didn’t contact the company but that the process went through the National Election Council; Smartmatic later won the bid over Indra, and the five-member Venezuelan electoral council, dominated by Chávez supporters, awarded a $91 million contract to Smartmatic for the referendum.

“At midnight on Election Day, the machine stopped counting,” the official said, noting that Chávez was losing at that point. “By 3 a.m., Chavez had won by 10 percent.”

Smartmatic spokesperson Samira Saba said that results aren’t available in real time.

In 2005, Smartmatic bought Sequoia Voting Systems, a much larger and more established company based in Oakland, California. At the time, Sequoia had installed voting equipment in 17 U.S. states and Washington.

Concerns that Smartmatic had ties to Chávez were so widespread at the time that the U.S. government began investigating the takeover of the company a year after the purchase, The New York Times reported at the time. The probe was conducted by the Committee of Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks.

Among the points for concern was Smartmatic’s convoluted business structure.

“Smartmatic has claimed to be of U.S. origin, but its true owners—probably elite Venezuelans of several political strains—remain hidden behind a web of holding companies in the Netherlands and Barbados,” according to the State Department cable.

In 2006, Treasury Secretary John Snow had inquired whether the Venezuelan government could use Sequoia to manipulate U.S. elections. Then-Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), another high-profile politician who raised similar concerns, was the first to voice the need for an investigation of the Sequoia deal.

Before it sold Sequoia, Smartmatic had refused to undergo such a review by the U.S. government, claiming all the allegations were simply rumors.

“It seems [Smartmatic] could not overcome the cloud of doubt surrounding this deal—had they been able to, we would not be talking about a sale of Sequoia today,” Maloney said in a 2006 statement. “As I said in May, it seems that a CFIUS review was in fact the proper course.”

Smartmatic attempted to respond to those concerns, but in 2007, ended up selling Sequoia to what the company described in a statement as “a group of private U.S. investors comprised by Sequoia’s current executive management team, led by Sequoia President & CEO Jack Blaine and the company’s chief financial officer, Peter McManemy.”

Such private equity firms, as well as Dominion, were named in a scathing 2019 release by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who had raised concerns about the poor condition and vulnerabilities of voting machines and other election equipment, along with a lack of transparency, in letters to these firms.?

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