The CEO of Dominion Voting Systems confirmed that the company will be filing defamation lawsuits against a handful of people or groups that have spread election-related conspiracy theories about it.
A day after the company’s legal team sent notices to Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is heading up the campaign’s legal challenges, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, to preserve all records, Dominion CEO John Poulos announced that the lawsuits will be coming even though he doesn’t know exactly when.
“We did send a letter to several different people that have been spreading lies and defamatory remarks about our company since Election Day on various media platforms. And right now, we did use the word ‘imminent,'” he said in a Christmas Eve morning interview on CNN. “We’ve handed it over to our legal team, and it’s completely in their hands, so they will be filing when they’re ready.”
When anchor John Berman asked Poulos if Dominion was “definitely” filing the suits, which he later said will be most prominently focused on Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who has worked closely with the Trump campaign since the election, he answered affirmatively.
“Well, several different actors have been promoting lies and amplifying those lies, as I said, on various media platforms, since Election Day. And many Americans across the country have been listening to this, repeatedly, and it’s causing serious doubts with their election systems, which, in our opinion, is the exact intent of these actors,” he added. “We fully expect that none of them will be retracting their statements. So it forces our hand to file action.”
The topic of the interview turned to Powell, who has repeatedly promoted unsubstantiated claims about Dominion and Smartmatic, another company that was used during the 2020 presidential election. She has filed a handful of lawsuits, nicknamed the Kraken, in battleground states where President-elect Joe Biden won, alleging a sweeping conspiracy designed to ensure Biden won the election. The lawsuits have overwhelmingly failed and have been thrown out by courts across the country.
According to Powell, the voting machines used in the election are the same kind used in Venezuela during the Hugo Chavez regime; they have the capability of switching votes secretly; and there is an illegal vote-changing scheme in U.S. politics that members of both parties have participated in.
Dominion has already taken action against Powell as she has been one of the biggest promoters of election-related conspiracy theories. Last week, the company wrote a letter to the former federal prosecutor demanding she retract the “wild, knowingly baseless and false accusations” she’s been spreading about the company.
“It’s complete lies, John,” Poulos said of Powell’s theories. “And Sidney Powell has certainly been the most egregious and prolific purveyor of these lies. And that’s exactly what they are. And we’re looking forward to showing and proving that in court.”
Many others in the president’s orbit, including President Trump himself, have made similar allegations. Powell has spent time at the White House in recent days, although she previously told the Washington Examiner that White House officials have pushed her away privately as they did so publicly, despite the president’s interest in her ideas.
Dominion, as well as Smartmatic, which has also faced conspiratorial allegations of fraud, has also warned media outlets about possible legal action against it for promoting similar election-related conspiracy theories about the company or who have let guests, like Powell, come on and make claims without fact-checking them.
Fox News and Newsmax each aired fact checks in response to the threat. On Fox News, its fact check, which was an interview with Eddie Perez, the global director of technology development and open standards for the Open Source Election Technology Institute, aired on Lou Dobbs’s, Maria Bartiromo’s, and Jeanine Pirro’s shows last week. Newsmax’s John Tabacco read a lengthy statement on-air in which he acknowledged that the network had “no evidence” to support the claims that have been spread on its airwaves.
Poulos noted during the interview that these fact checks will not “factor into” the legal action.
“Well, I’ve seen a few of them, and I really — it’s not going to factor into our legal discussion,” he said. “It’s the bare minimum of what they can be doing, specifically regarding the media outlets that have been amplifying these messages. It’s the bare minimum of what they could be doing to ensure [the] reputation of their own brand and their own reputation for reporting facts.”
Eric Coomer, the company’s director of product safety and security, who is on temporary leave because of the threats, has filed a defamation lawsuit against 14 entities, many of whom are the same that Dominion is focusing on — Giuliani; Powell; the Trump campaign; Gateway Pundit and its founder Jim Hoft; Herring Networks, the parent company of One America News Network; one of OANN’s anchors in Chanel Rion; and Newsmax, among others.
“My entire family, their private information that be published online,” Coomer said in a Wednesday evening interview on CNN. “People have taken photos of my house. People have threatened to come by and lynch me, decapitate me. They’ve referred to me as a traitor. And it is not safe for me to, you know, go about my daily life.”
