The voting machine company Dominion on Monday sued former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani for defamation, seeking $1.3 billion for what it described as a months-long “Big Lie” about the company.
To read the 107 page complaint, see today's AXIOS.
TALKING POINTS MEMO writes this morning that in the suit, Dominion noted that Giuliani was willing to go much further with his fraud claims in the public sphere than he went in court — where lying could result in serious penalties.
“Although he was unwilling to make false election fraud claims about Dominion and its voting machines in a court of law because he knew those allegations are false, he and his allies manufactured and disseminated the ‘Big Lie,’ which foreseeably went viral and deceived millions of people into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election,” Dominion alleged of Giuliani.
The 100-page filing on Monday alleged that Giuliani knowingly and maliciously spread false information about Dominion for months for his own political and financial ends. The strategy began, in the suit’s telling, as election results were still rolling in.
As Matt Shuham writes for TPM, Dominion weighed Giuliani’s claims about election integrity against public records and those who came out vocally against the “stolen” election narrative, including “reliable sources like Trump appointee Bill Barr, Trump appointee Chris Krebs, Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, federal judges, and 59 election security experts.”
“[A]s a result of the viral disinformation campaign, Dominion has been unfairly subjected to the hatred, contempt, and distrust of tens of millions of American voters, and the elected officials who are Dominion’s actual and potential customers have received emails, letters, and calls from their constituents demanding that they avoid contracting with Dominion or using Dominion machines,” Dominion alleged.