UPDATE 6/11/2024: Smartmatic using Discovery as a weapon to attack FOX board members. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/smartmatic-seeks-to-depose-four-fox-officials-as-part-of-2020-lawsuit/ar-BB1nYu0K
UPDATE 5/13/2024: “The English used to have a law on sedentary libel. It’s one of the reasons we fought a revolutionary war. If you criticized the government, you could be prosecuted for sedentary libel. If what you said was true, that didn’t matter. Truth was not a defense because the greater the truth, the greater the libel. In other words, if what you were saying and criticizing the government was true, it brought them into greater disrepute, and we needed to prosecute you more.That, ladies and gentlemen, I fear, is the step we’ve taken in this country. People that are simply shining a light on what went on and telling the truth about it are essentially being accused of sedentary libel.” https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/05/2-6-13/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2-6-13
UPDATE 9/24/2023: After a few emails with Prof. Volokh, I turned my attention to the issue of proving ‘malice’ in order for a government ‘entity’ to sue for tortious libel. I have only read through the appellate holding, but am zeroing in on how Dominion got away with claiming they proved malice, the essential element for Dominion to sue. Much of it, as discussed by the court, was ‘narrative.’ One ‘narrative’ was true, the other therefore must be false. ‘Narrative,’ can be mirror-imaged. One party may say Trump attacked the Capitol on January 6th; but another will say Democrats used Antifa and the FBI to attack the joint session. With the 2020 election, one ‘narrative’ is the elections were free and fair, fraud at a minimum. The other is that fraud was so apparent (2000 Mules) that immediate questioning about miscounted ballots (Trump to GA SOS Raffensperger, the basis for the Fulton County criminal indictment) was necessary, and audits like those held in Arizona and Wisconsin (both uncovering massive abuse of voter registration and the mail ballot).
So, if the ‘narrative’ . . . . which is essentially repeating from someone else, as in propagating a narrative, i.e., propaganda . . . is not the accepted norm, then it is false.
“These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion. Thus, Dominion has successfully brought home actual malice to the individuals at Fox Corporation who it claims to be responsible for the broadcasts.”
https://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/superior-court/2022/n21c-11-082-emd-ccld.html (page 20)
Why did FOX settle instead of fight? So, Dominion gained access to private source communications between journalists discussing weight of evidence and ‘proof.’ Some call that ‘spit-balling,’ seeking confirmation or a consensus. Journalists report facts and opinion relying on editors and attorneys to avoid legal pitfalls.
UPDATE: In this post I rely heavily on a 2009 article on a U.S. Supreme Court case barring ‘government entities’ from suing for libel. Over the past week I’ve been corresponding with its author, UCLA Law School professor Eugene Volokh. At first, Mr. Volokh dismissed my premise because Dominion Voting Systems was a corporation, an ‘entity’ under the law, and therefore could sue FOX for libel. I countered by using the TIZA charter school in his article being barred from libel suits because it was a government-funded entity. How much more so is Dominion, being directly involved in controlling elections through their proprietary technology, and that technology enabled through legislation passed specific to that technology. In addition, charter schools aren’t a government function per se, while elections are! (Art I Sec 4 Cl I, The Election Clause)
“[N]o court of last resort in this country has ever held, or even suggested, that prosecutions for libel on government have any place in the American system of jurisprudence. The right of the government to prosecute its accusers was founded on the theory that the king could do no wrong. ” City of Chicago v. Tribune Co., 307 Ill. 595, 601, 139 N.E. (1923)
Again, Dominion Voting Systems in its recent promotion, if not abuse, of Vote-By-Mail, is firmly ‘in bed’ with contracting governments (about 21 states) to help them implement and legislate Dominion’s voting system that has TRIPLED Democrat votes ‘by mail.’ In Pennsylvania, Biden pulled ahead of Trump’s 2:1 election night victory by 1.2%; going from only having half of Trump’s votes to a slim margin of victory. In fact, 60% of Biden’s votes were ‘by mail.’ (Graphic from the Philadelphia Inquirer.)
Professor Volokh relented, agreeing that Dominion was equivalent to a ‘public official,’ but ended our conversation by saying Dominion could still sue but had to prove ‘actual malice’ by FOX, which is a purely Political Question. If one reads the inter-office communications between FOX pundits like Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity, while they showed distrust and a lack of understanding of claims made by attorney Sydney Powell (her Dominion defamation lawsuit is pending), whom Pirro is quoted calling her a ‘nut-job,’ and Hannity frustrated not having more proof . . . that ‘process’ in preparing reports and opinion pieces is normal when complex issues are being investigated prior to approval for broadcast.
So, while the Delaware judge decided 2020 election fraud was clearly ‘debunked,’ that made FOX reporting of ‘vote flipping’ and mail ballot abuse knowingly ‘false,’ i.e., a seditious narrative. ‘Vote-Flipping,’ by the way, is a well-reported flaw in Dominion’s electronic voting machines, which some experts attribute to touch screen calibration, or the way the voter actually touches the screen.
The Delaware judge in this case decided such comments, taken out of the greater context of inter-office debate, made it ‘crystal clear’ FOX was politically malicious and knew what they were reporting was false. Therefore, Dominion Voting Systems, totally funded by state election contracts, was able to use millions of our taxpayer dollars to silence FOX conservative reporting on how our elections may be corrupted by the new, expanded Vote-By-Mail technology lobbied into election law by Dominion itself . . . and has been proven to have flipped the election in many states from Trump to Biden.
Considering that our right of redress is particularly applicable to a Free Press, can there be any more terrible an abuse of government largess, in suing dissent into dust.
End of UPDATE
However, ‘evidence’ of election fraud is right in our faces and on many levels, from sketchy legislation permitting Dominion’s highly questionable abuse of Signature Matching when a Photo ID and SS# would be instantaneous and 100% accurate verification of voter registration, to hundreds of sworn Affidavits and videos. ‘Proof’ is a term of art, on one level in a court of law but another when a journalist amasses enough evidence to publish.
SMARTMATIC AND DOMINION BRAG ABOUT THEIR CYBERSECURITY AND VOTER VERIFICATION USING BIOMETRICS . . . Then why are 32 states using Signature Matching which is the opposite of biometrics, just a visual impression or percentages of ‘matching’ using a computer ‘app’?
When hearing of the pretrial Summary Judgments against FOX and Dominion’s attack on their reporters, perhaps the simple fact the judge was actually letting this case go forward rather than dismiss it is why FOX settled; there was no way they were going to get a fair trial.
Dismissal? Dominion is not only a long-term contracted government agent, but actively revised legislation and managed elections. So, under existing legal precedent concerning government entities Dominion was barred from suing for libel. And as the issue was election integrity, were not the stories more about various states and their Secretaries of State, rather than their contracted agent?
This is from attorney Eugene Volokh’s article (Dec 11, 2009) on a government charter school countersuing the ACLU for tortious interference and libel:
“The ACLU sued the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy — a state-funded charter school — alleging that it was operated as a Muslim school and thus violated the Establishment Clause. The Academy counterclaimed, alleging defamation and tortious interference with current and prospective contractual relations. Wednesday, the federal district court rejected the libel claim, reasoning that the charter school was a governmental entity, and governmental entities can’t sue for libel.”
First of all, the issue of religious schools accessing public funding was settled in Everson vs Board of Education (1947).
Secondly, in the Dominion vs FOX libel suit FOX, unlike schools, is directly protected by the 1st Amendment; and elections (again, unlike schools) are solely a government function set out in the U.S. and state constitutions.
So, following the Tarek case and Sullivan vs New York Times, Dominion (and Smartmatic) had ZERO standing or constitutional right to sue FOX NEWS, or any news service or citizen for defamation. Dominion was contracted by almost half the states to manage elections, even to the point of drafting legislation to enable their VOTE BY MAIL election fraud voting methods. And how many election outcomes throughout the America’s has Dominion affected through abuse of the mail ballot?
And, speaking of which, why are nearly half the states letting a foreign, multi-national company, their technology (shared by Smartmatic) actually originating from a depraved Socialist dictatorship run our elections?
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