Tag: campaign 2020
Judge Aileen Cannon

Judge Cannon Allows Release Of Special Counsel Report On Trump Coup

On Monday, January 13 — a week before Donald Trump's second inauguration — the news broke that Judge Aileen Cannon had OK'd the release of part of former special counsel Jack Smith's final report on his two criminal cases against the president-elect.

Smith's final report contains two volumes: one dealing with Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents case (which Cannon dismissed), the other dealing with Smith's election interference case (which Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed without prejudice at Smith's request after Trump won the 2024 election). And Cannon gave the go-ahead for the release of the election interference portion of the report, while setting a January 17 hearing for the classified documents part.

After the news broke, CNN's Dana Bash brought on legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid for analysis.

Reid told Bash, "What we were looking for today is whether she would try to block (the full release) of Jack Smith's reports. As a special counsel, he is required by regulation to submit reports detailing his investigative decisions to the attorney general. He has submitted two reports to Attorney General Merrick Garland…. The classified documents report is not expected to be released anytime soon, because that case is still active."

Reid added, "Trump had co-defendants in that case. Their cases are still active even though Trump's has been dismissed. So, all eyes are on the January 6 report. And…. Judge Cannon cleared the way for this report to possibly be released. "

Reid noted, however, that based on conversations with sources, she "wouldn't be surprised" if Trump's lawyers "appealed" Cannon's ruling and went "higher up the legal food chain to try to block this release."

Reid told Bash, "Even though sources on both sides tell me there's not a lot of news in this report….. the Trump team had made it clear: They are going to fight Jack Smith and the Justice Department every step of the way."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Tech Billionaire Invests Heavily In Smartmatic Lawsuit Against Fox News

Tech Billionaire Invests Heavily In Smartmatic Lawsuit Against Fox News

Any hope that executives at Fox News could stiff-arm and drag out the defamation lawsuit filed against them by voting technology company Smartmatic following the 2020 presidential election took a serious hit after a billionaire investor came to their rescue.

According to a report from the Washington Post, billionaire Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman has invested millions in the company that will allow it to bolster their legal battle with the media giant.

With Fox having already settled with Dominion Voting Systems to the tune of $787.5 million to make their 2020 election conspiracy defamation case go away, Smartmatic can now avoid being forced to drop their suit due to lack of funds.

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Noting that Hoffman was a behind-the-scenes backer of New York writer E. Jean Carroll's lawsuits against Donald Trump that led to the former president getting hit with $89 million in judgments, the tech billionaire is once again a player in a lawsuit tied to Trump — in this case his election loss.


As the Post's Jeremy Barr is reporting, Hoffmann explained his move in a statement, writing: “Smartmatic built a global business by using technology to better engage citizens, regardless of party or ideology, by making voting simple and trustworthy,” before adding, “After Donald Trump lost in 2020, however, Smartmatic became a target of the defamatory campaign to overturn his defeat.”

Speaking for Hoffman, spokesperson Dmitri Mehlhorn elaborated, "Not only is Smartmatic a great investment in terms of financial returns, this was a way to provide capital that would allow the truth to be found in the courts. This is a company that is a great company with a great CEO, and this case is a great case.”

The Post report goes on to note that "billionaires have previously wielded unexpected influence in media defamation battles. Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, paid about $10 million to help finance a lawsuit filed by the wrestler Hulk Hogan against Gawker Media. Thiel had taken a dislike to Gawker after the gossip-focused website published unflattering articles about him and his associates. When Hogan won a $140 million judgment against Gawker, the company was forced into bankruptcy.(Hoffman was an early executive at PayPal, and both he and Thiel are part of the 'PayPal mafia.')"

Hoffman spokesperson Mehlhorn admitted, "When Reid deploys financial capital, that always has a philosophical element of protecting the rule of law. We’ve always thought the court system was an important part of the battle to protect America from MAGA.”

In a statement to Raw Story, Fox News wrote: “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims against FOX News are highly implausible, disconnected from reality and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms, so their alliance with a high profile Democratic donor and longtime supporter of President Biden to fund their lawsuit is entirely predictable. We remain ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial next year.”

You can read more here.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Rupert Murdoch

Doddering Murdoch Was In Denial Over Dominion Lawsuit

This week New York Magazine published a sprawling account of the lead-up to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s ouster from the network, detailing Rupert Murdoch’s state of “denial” surrounding the $787.5 million dollar settlement his company was forced to pay to Dominion Voting Systems.

Murdoch on Thursday announced he was stepping down as chairman of Fox and News Corp.

Dominion Voting Systems successfully sued Fox News for defamation after the network accused the company of rigging voting machines to steal votes from former President Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election. In April 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million and acknowledged, in a statement, “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false."

The suit, Wolff notes “was far and away the largest defamation award ever made, outside of Alex Jones.”


In an excerpt from his new book, The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, Wolff reports that after a Delaware Superior Court judge in June 2022 "ruled that the suit could also extend to Fox News’ parent company, Fox Corp,” a visitor to the billionaire’s Montana Ranch found Murdoch “absolutely unwilling to consider any view in which Fox could be at fault.

Wolff writes:

Murdoch, the visitor discovered, was stuck in a place far from the real world. The Dominion suit had somehow become an attack on him and on his long career. He seemed angrily trapped in the company’s desperate and preposterous logic: that it was just airing the newsworthy opinions of important political figures.

“Why don’t you just settle?” asked the visitor. This provoked a Murdoch rant, lots of it hard to follow but leaving the visitor with the sense that Murdoch had found himself alone, up against all those who wanted him to settle, and that he, if no one else, was going to stand up for free speech. And at any rate, it wasn’t Fox’s fault. It was Donald Trump’s fault. He wasn’t going to pay for what Donald Trump did. Sue Donald Trump. The visitor came away wondering how this famously cold and analytic business mind had become such a hot mess.

According to Wolff, while Rupert Murdoch remained static in his denial leading up to the settlement, CEO Lachlan Murdorch — who was named chairman and CEO of Fox News in 2019 — “began telling people that Fox was going to focus on Dominion and get it resolved.”

“But Rupert Murdoch wasn’t having it — he seemed to double down on a desire to punish Trump rather than resolve Dominion. Dominion wasn’t the problem — Trump was,” Wolff writes.

As Wolff reports, Murdoch’s refusal to settle with Dominion bucked the two main rules “of libel law for a media company” — 1) “never to go before a jury,” and 2) “avoid discovery.”

“On Monday, April 17, the day the jury was supposed to be seated and opening statements begun — before a day’s delay was declared — Murdoch told Carlson Dominion was holding to a demand of a billion dollars in damages,” Wolff reports. “For Murdoch, this was a nonstarter: He would not endure the humiliation and defeat of paying a ten-figure settlement in the case. It would be not only a record-shattering sum but also tremendous fodder for his enemies (like the Times) when it came to writing headlines.”

But the company did settle, announcing the following day that it was “pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems.”

“We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues,” Fox News said in a statement.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

trump election fraud

Trump Campaign Spent $600K On 'Election Fraud' Report -- Then Buried It

Donald Trump repeatedly lied in public and in private about what he claimed – with made up numbers – was extensive election fraud, and went as far as to spend more than $600,000 to commission a study that would prove his allegations true. The expensive and extensive report did the exact opposite, exponentially deflating his lies. He never released the report, and to his day has continued to lie about election fraud.

The Washington Post obtained a copy of the report, publishing some of its findings and comparing them to lies Trump told.

“So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people,” Trump told Brad Raffensperger in his infamous January 2, 2021 telephone call demanding the Georgia Republican secretary of state “find” him an additional 11,780 votes.

“And they went to obituaries,” Trump continued, beefing up his false claims. “They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”

That was not only false, it was a lie.

Five thousand dead voters did not cast a ballot. Not even close. Trump’s own report put the likely potential number at 23.

“Researchers paid by Trump’s team had ‘high confidence’ of only nine dead voters in Fulton County, defined as ballots that may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. They believed there was a ‘potential statewide exposure’ of 23 such votes across the Peach State — or 4,977 fewer than the ‘minimum’ Trump claimed.”

In court documents, Trump’s lawyers, trying to overturn Nevada’s election results stated, the Post reports, “1,506 ballots were cast in the names of dead people and 42,284 voted twice. Trump lost the Silver State by about 33,000 votes.”

In reality, the number of dead voters casting ballots was closer to 20.

Trump’s own researchers “had ‘high confidence’ that 12 ballots were cast in the names of deceased people in Clark County, Nev., and believed the ‘high end potential exposure’ was 20 voters statewide — some 1,486 fewer than Trump’s lawyers said.”

Instead of 42,284 people voting twice, Trump’s report put the low end probability at 45 double votes, and the high end at 9,063.

The Justice Department obtained emails, reports, and interviews showing Trump’s own campaign officials “analyzing, and often discrediting, claims that Trump was making publicly.”

Read the Post’s full report here.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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