Unfortunately for its proponents, these theories carried one very significant drawback: legal liability. While broad claims of voter fraud are relatively unspecific and involve many potential perpetrators, there are relatively few voting-machine companies. Claiming such things means impugning them specifically and creating a situation in which your baseless claims can lead to calculable personal and business harm, which is important when it comes to suing someone for defamation.
And sue they have. The result: Many if not most of the high-profile purveyors of such claims have since backed off.
One by one, they’ve succumbed to legal pressure by issuing corrections, clarifications or apologies. While some true believers of these theories viewed such lawsuits as opportunities to prove malfeasance once and for all, through the discovery process, those facing penalties have repeatedly left them high and dry — almost as if these theories were completely baseless in the first place and they didn’t have a leg to stand on.
But it’s not even the first time Newsmax has sought to walk back or water down some of the voting-machine claims made on its airways. And meanwhile, just a few days before, a lawsuit from voters claiming a vast conspiracy involving Dominion and various state officials in swing states was dismissed after the plaintiffs withdrew their claims.
Below is a timeline of how such claims against both Dominion and another voting-machine company, Smartmatic, have been effectively disowned.
Dec. 20-21: Newsmax posts a statement, which a host reads on-air, clarifying that the channel has not proved such claims, while arguing that it also hadn’t stated the claims as true.
Feb. 2: Newsmax attempts to stop MyPillow CEO and Trump supporter Mike Lindell from making claims about Dominion during an interview. A host reads a legal disclaimer while talking over Lindell and later walking off the set when Lindell refused to yield. “We just want to let people know that there’s nothing substantive that we have seen,” the host says.
Jan. 15: The right-wing American Thinker blog issues a full-throated apology and retraction of voting-machine stories written by four authors, calling the sources behind them “discredited” and saying their “statements are completely false and have no basis in fact.”
Jan. 20: It is reported that One America News, despite criticizing its competitor Newsmax for caving to legal pressure, removed a number of stories about voting machines from its website, without formally retracting them.
Feb. 1: In a New York Times story, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel acknowledges that she worried about legal liability from the RNC hosting a news conference in which Trump lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell made various unproven claims about the election.
Feb. 4: WABC, the radio station that hosts Giuliani’s show, runs a disclaimer distancing itself from claims made on his show. Giuliani says he was unaware the disclaimer would be aired, labeling it “rather insulting.”
Feb. 5: While airing Lindell’s documentary, OAN runs an extensive disclaimer. Despite Lindell claiming “absolute proof” — and that being the actual title of the documentary — OAN says claims in the documentary “are not intended to be taken or interpreted by the viewer as established facts.”
March 22: Powell files a motion to dismiss Dominion’s lawsuit against her. But rather than standing by her claims, she says “reasonable people” wouldn’t take them as fact and that she was merely acting as a legal advocate. This despite Powell having said repeatedly that she had irrefutable proof backing up her claims, frequently labeling the release of such information the “Kraken.”
April 30: Newsmax issues its apology to Coomer as part of an apparent settlement with Dominion. The channel disowns claims made about Coomer that he interfered with voting machines and had ties to antifa. “Newsmax subsequently found no evidence that such allegations were true,” the apology says. “Many of the states whose results were contested by the Trump campaign after the November 2020 election have conducted extensive recounts and audits, and each of these states certified the results as legal and final.”
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May 03, 2021 at 10:25PM
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The slow, painful death of Trump allies’ voting-machine conspiracy theories - The Washington Post
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