Posted on 05/17/2025 1:12:30 PM PDT by george76
Customers rejected Smartmatic for reasons unrelated to Fox. For example, the filing said, Smartmatic’s equipment was not certified..
Both Fox News and Smartmatic, the voting software company, filed lengthy briefs Thursday arguing about Smartmatic’s past and predicted financial health. Fox’s filing reveals how Smartmatic was massively losing business long before Fox began reporting on it in 2020.
Smartmatic’s filing, which includes many fully redacted pages, says that before the 2020 election, Smartmatic’s CEO believed the company to be “strategically positioned for multi-billion-dollar growth, given its global footprint, its track record,” and its breaking into the U.S. market with a contract in Los Angeles, California.
Smartmatic seeks $2.7 billion from Fox in a years-long defamation case in which it accuses Fox of reporting without evidence that the company’s software had a role in rigging the 2020 election. This, the company has said in court fillings, caused Smartmatic to lose business.
But the bleeding started years before the 2020 election, Fox’s Thursday filing argued.
“Smartmatic’s financial condition steadily deteriorated in the years leading up to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, with its revenues plummeting from $477 million in 2012 to $119 million in 2020,” Fox’s filing reads. “During this period, Smartmatic lost its largest customer, Venezuela. Smartmatic struggled to gain new business to make up the difference, and its profitability evaporated, with losses of $52.6 [million] in 2017, $11.6 million in 2018, $17.1 million in 2019, and $19.6 million in 2020.”
Smartmatic says some potential customers refused to deal with Smartmatic because they believed Smartmatic was connected to rigging the 2020 election, and customers who didn’t believe the rigging claim would not hire the company because their voters viewed the company with suspicion.
“According to Smartmatic’s Head of Global Sales, Pedro Mugica, the spread of disinformation about Smartmatic rigging the 2020 U.S. election severely damaged the company’s business prospects,” Smartmatic’s filing said. “Potential clients explicitly told him hiring Smartmatic was a no-go because the company’s name had been tarnished by claims of election rigging in the U.S. Clients directly informed Smartmatic that they could not work with the company because it was considered ‘toxic’ due to claims of election rigging in the U.S.”
Fox’s filing also claimed Smartmatic was embroiled in claims of fraud in Venezuelan and Filipino elections well before any controversy arose over the 2020 presidential election. Smartmatic was founded in 1997 in Caracas, Venezuela as “Tecnología Smartmatic de Venezuela C.A” and was hired in 2004 by Hugo Chávez’s administration to handle the Venezuelan presidential recall election. That was Smartmatic’s first election, one marked by controversial results.
The filing also claimed that Smartmatic’s equipment was not certified, the company didn’t follow bidding requirements, and its services were not competitively priced.
“Smartmatic’s claimed harm is pure fiction, invented in the hopes of securing a litigation windfall and chilling Fox News’s speech,” the filing said.
The comments Smartmatic complains about were broadcast in the United States, but Smartmatic claims it lost business in Turkey, Iraq, and the Congo based on the comments, that may not have even been broadcast in those countries, the filing said.
“For more than half of the 91 contract ‘opportunities’ Smartmatic claims it lost, the target jurisdiction did not even issue requests for proposals. Those jurisdictions were not buying — from Smartmatic or anyone else,” the filing stated.
As The Federalist reported earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice criminally indicted three Smartmatic executives in a “bribery and money laundering scheme to retain and obtain business related to the 2016 Philippines elections” in August 2024. The DOJ said company officials paid $1 million in bribes, allegedly to get contracts to provide voting machines and election services.
Fox News requested a summary judgment on their Anti-SLAPP counterclaims, saying the discovery record vindicates what they have been saying throughout the case and called the case a “meritless cash grab to try to replenish Smartmatic’s coffers.”
Anti-SLAPP allows defendants to dismiss frivolous lawsuits aimed at silencing speech on matters of public concern.
Controversy?
That’s a euphemism to say the least
Thanks for posting
Thanks
Smartmatic Hid Meeting With Dem Megadonor Who Financed Its Suit Against 2020 Election Reporting.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4317151/posts
At this point, given the state of the judicial system, the merits of the case may be secondary to the question of who is the presiding judge and who appointed him
<> <> <>
HEADLINE:
World
Voting machine firm: Venezuela vote rigged “without any doubt”
August 2, 2017 / 10:59 AM EDT / AP
<> <> <>
EXCERPT:
CARACAS, Venezuela — The CEO of the voting technology company Smartmatic said Wednesday that results of Venezuela’s election for an all-powerful constituent assembly were off by at least 1 million votes.
Antonio Mugica said results recorded by his systems and those reported by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council indicate “without any doubt” that official turnout figures were inflated.
U.S. slams “Maduro dictatorship” as Venezuelan dissidents arrested
Smartmatic was created by Venezuelans and began providing electronic voting machines in 2004 during the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez.
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SOURCE:
The rule of law is gone = the merits of the case secondary to the presiding judge
When our County bought new machines (we did NOT buy Smartmatic), I asked one of our County Commissioners about them. He said Smartmatic machines weren’t the cheapest, but Looked cheap, like they were slapped together out of some commercially available parts. Those parts also hadn’t undergone certifications.
Why did Murdoch the Younger agree to make a direct wealth transfer to Dominion for $787.5M; and refuses to fund Smartmatic on the same merits?
Again, why did Fox choose to transfer nearly a billon dollars to Dominion and refuse to do the same for Smartmatic on identical merits?
I am asking you people for the umpteenth time, use your minds. You want to comment like FRacebook, you want to pound your keyboard with your asses and elbows, but Fox's deliberate transfer of unimaginable wealth to Dominion is unmistakably one of the largest private settlements in history.
And yet none of you comprehend that well enough to even offer a comment commensurate with the inexplicable transfer of wealth, over a lawsuit they are fighting tooth and nail with an identical defendant that should have been folded into the original lawsuit.
Okay, I give up. Why? Why, beyond being successfully sued, did Fox do such a thing?
Smartmatic allowed a Chavez win in 2004, many House, Senate and Governor races in 2008/2012, a Maduro steal in 2022, a 2020 Biden win and a 2022 Brazil win for the communists. Stop Smartmatic (Soros Diebold) and Dominion. Make them pay a heavy price for cheating the working ppl of this world. Communism will always suck.
Smartmatic needed money so the democrats made an offer.
Rig elections for us and you will have billions.
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