The week
Dominion spokesman: ‘Mike Lindell begs to be sued, and at some point we may oblige him’
“In a matter of weeks, lawsuits and legal threats from some obscure election technology companies reached what years of advertising boycotts, public pressure campaigns and liberal outrage could not do: limit the flow of misinformation in right-wing media,” Michael said. Grynbaum writes for The New York Times. Dominion Voting Systems has sued Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell for damages, with $ 1.3 billion in damages. They threatened to sue Fox News and other conservative media. Competitive technology firm Smartmatic has sued Fox News for $ 2.7 billion. CNN’s Brian Stelter asked Dominion spokesman Michael Steel on Sunday about the lawsuits, including whether there are any new ones on the horizon. “I’m not here to make news on the front, but let me put it this way: Mike Lindell is begging to be sued, and at some point we can oblige him,” Steel said. LindP CEO MyPillow paid three hours of airtime on One America News Network on Friday to broadcast a program he produced about his voting conspiracy theories. OANN kicked it off with an extraordinary indemnity. Lindell tweeted Saturday night that he could sue Dominion, a threat Steel laughed at CNN. Steel, a former spokesman for House Speakers Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) And John Boehner (R-Ohio), also said Dominion’s Fox News charge is ‘definitely a possibility’. A media law professor, Lynn Oberlander, told Stelter that the indemnity of Fox News, Newsmax, OANN and other outlets showed that claims for voice fraud could actually protect them from the slander. They are ‘not a typical playbook for right-wing media, who are proud of pugilism and enjoy ignoring the liberals who have long complained about its contents’, writes Grynbaum. But as it may or may not, ‘litigation represents a new front in the war on misinformation, a plague that has reformed American politics, deprived citizens of general facts and paved the way for the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol. ‘ Attorney Roberta Kaplan told the Times that lawsuits “should not be the way to govern speech in our country.” “It’s not an effective or productive way to promote truthful or qualitative journalistic standards by pursuing a lawsuit. But I think it’s so bad now that the problem is so bad that there is virtually no other way to do it. do not. ” Fox News said in a statement that it was “proud of our election coverage in 2020 and will vigorously defend itself against Smartmatic’s’ merciless lawsuit. “More stories from theweek.com Rep. Adam Kinzinger tells his fellow Republicans that Trump is guilty ‘needed to save America’. What’s the point of Trump’s second indictment? 5 cruelly funny cartoons about America’s complicated vaccination