Newsmax Settles Smartmatic Defamation Lawsuit, Averting Trial Over 2020 Election Rigging Claims

Newsmax has reached a settlement with election systems company Smartmatic, averting a defamation trial that was set to start next week.

The terms were not disclosed.

Smartmatic had sued the outlet over its amplification of claims that it was involved in rigging of the 2020 election, even though, in reality, the election systems company was only providing services in Los Angeles County.

“Newsmax is pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement,” the media outlet said in a statement.

Smartmatic said, “We are very pleased to have secured the completion of the case against Newsmax.”

Jury selection started today in Delaware Superior Court, and the trial was scheduled to begin on Monday. The judge in the case, Eric M. Davis, also presided over Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox, which settled last year just as a trial was to start. The network agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million.

Smartmatic sued Newsmax in November, 2021, claiming that as the network sought a larger audience, it published dozens of reports indicating that Smartmatic was in a “criminal conspiracy” to rig the results of the election, “and that its technology and software were used to switch votes from former President Trump to now President Biden.”

The judge in recent weeks issued a series of rulings that greatly impacted the nature of the trial — and likely influenced the desire of the parties to settle.

In a summary judgment ruling issued earlier this month, Davis ruled that statements that ran on Newsmax “regarding Smartmatic software or voting machines altering the results of the Election are factually false. The reports and investigations conducted by multiple state and federal agencies since the Election universally come to the same result.”

But he left it up to a jury to decide if Newsmax was liable for actual malice, the threshold required for proving a defamation claim. Davis said that the jury would have to determine if “Newsmax was doing what media organizations typically do—inform the public of newsworthy events” or if the media outlet did “purposely avoid the truth and defame Smartmatic.”

Earlier this week, though,