The 2020 presidential election was always going to be a troublesome affair due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Election officials by and large did their level best to ensure as smooth and accurate a process as possible, and they succeeded. But because the results took longer than usual to tally, it all seemed to be confusing and murky.
When Democrat Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election, the Trump campaign and its legal team sought to use the muddle of confusion in this unusual election to overturn the results, casting doubt on both election officials and the machines used to tally the votes. But the one thing the Trump campaign never came up with to back its allegations in the dozens of court cases filed around the nation was any evidence.
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Now, with Biden’s election win confirmed and the new administration in the White House, the Trump campaign’s baseless fraud allegations are coming home to roost.
Dominion Voting Systems, maker of some of the machines that counted ballots in the election, has filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
In its lawsuit, Dominion accused Giuliani of trying to profit off of the doubts he spread about the company.
“Just as Giuliani and his allies intended, the Big Lie went viral on social media as people tweeted, retweeted, and raged that Dominion had stolen their votes,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote, according to CNN . “While some lies — little lies — flare up on social media and die with the next news cycle, the Big Lie was different. The harm to Dominion’s business and reputation is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believe it.”
The “Big Lie” in the lawsuit refers to the Trump campaign’s allegations that the election had been stolen from them.
And the Big Lie places Dominion at the center, accusing the machines of changing votes, or that parts of the machines had been removed or replaced, something Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling pushed back on, saying, “None of that is true, not a whit,” according to USA Today .
And as the lawsuit notes, what Giuliani claimed on social media — such as the claim that Dominion was secretly owned by Venezuelan communists (it’s not) — never made it into lawsuits, where such claims would have had to have been backed by evidence.
Multiple investigations into such fraud claims only backed Biden’s win.
In Georgia, Sterling refuted the many falsehoods being spread about the election in a January press conference, USA Today reported. “This is all obviously, easily, provably false,” he said.
Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, has had to push back against election falsehoods in her state. Before a House Committee in January, Boockvar reiterated that “The ongoing assault against facts & our democratic process must end — it goes against everything we stand for in this country. Our counties ran a secure and exceptionally transparent election and the people have spoken.”
In Wisconsin, Trump-appointed federal judge Brett Ludwig tossed a Trump campaign lawsuit seeking to overturn that state’s election results, saying that the legal arguments “fail on their merits,” Forbes reported.
Even Trump’s own Department of Justice concluded in December that there was no widespread election fraud, AP News reported.
Nevertheless, Dominion says that Giuliani and Trump and other allies have continued the Big Lie and “actively propagated disinformation to purposefully mislead voters.”
According to NBC News , the lawsuit says that because of the Big Lie pushed by Giuliani, “Dominion’s founder and employees have been harassed and received death threats, and Dominion has suffered unprecedented and irreparable harm.
“Dominion brings this action to set the record straight, to vindicate the company’s rights under civil law, to recover compensatory and punitive damages, and to stand up for itself, its employees, and the electoral process.”
Dominion also noted that Giuliani has continued to spread the Big Lie despite a cease-and-desist letter.
And he has done so repeatedly on his podcasts and YouTube channel, profiting off of the Big Lie, Dominion claimed.
“Giuliani has not retracted his false claims about Dominion, and many of his false and defamatory television and radio appearances and tweets remain available online to a global internet audience. Indeed, to this day, he continues to double down on the Big Lie,” the lawsuit states, according to CNN.
Dominion’s CEO, John Poulos, added a personal statement.
“Not only have these lies damaged the good name of my company, but they also undermined trust in American democratic institutions, drowning out the remarkable work of elections officials and workers, who ensured a transparent and secure election. The thousands of hand recounts and audits that proved machines counted accurately continue to be overshadowed by disinformation.
“Giuliani continues to make demonstrably false claims, and we intend to hold him, and others who spread disinformation, to account.”
