Dominion: will one Canadian company bring down Trump's empire of disinformation?

[Judi Lynn]

David Smith in Washington
@smithinamerica
Sun 4 Apr 2021 02.00 EDT

Dominion has filed defamation lawsuits against several Trump allies for pushing election ‘radioactive falsehoods’ – could it triumph?

When Donald Trump and his allies pushed the “big lie” of voter fraud and a stolen election, it seemed nothing could stop them spreading disinformation with impunity.

Politicians and activists’ pleas fell on deaf ears. TV networks and newspapers fact-checked in vain. Social media giants proved impotent.

But now a little-known tech company, founded 18 years ago in Canada, has the conspiracy theorists running scared. The key: suing them for defamation, potentially for billions of dollars.

“Libel laws may prove to be a very old mechanism to deal with a very new phenomenon of massive disinformation,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist. “We have all these fact checkers but lots of people don’t care. Nothing else seems to work, so maybe this will.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/04/dominion-trump-disinformation-fox-news-sidney-powell-giuliani-mike-lindell-lawsuits

[Karadeniz]

1. Sic the liars, Canada!

[multigraincracker]

2. Oh Canada

Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee

I will smile when I look East across Lake Huron.

[ColinC]

3. I thought it was Venezuelan

Magats insisted it was Venezuelan....

[burrowowl]

4. and Hugo Chavez the spirit guide!

[FakeNoose]

5. The lies are being spread by Faux Noise - sue Faux, not Chump

Sue Twitter, not Chump. Sue Facebook, not Chump.

Sue everybody who spreads his lies, and that's how you put Chump out of business. Twitter finally got smart, but it wasn't until a massive amount of damage was done. Faux is still spreading their shit just like always. Sue them for enabling all those lies, as well as creating many of them.

The Supreme Court isn't going to help us, at least not now. Maybe not ever.

[MissMillie]

6. Smartmatic has the strongest case--hands down... and will demonstrate

the lack of credibility of the the defendants (who are pretty much the same defendants in the Dominion case).

Smartmatic software was used in ONE SINGLE county in the November election--Los Angeles County, CA, where the results were NEVER (not even to this day) in question.

However, some years ago, Smartmatic products were used an election in Venezuela, and the government there reported results that were different from what Smartmatic had counted. Smartmatic blew the whistle on the Chavez government.

But to hear Powell, Giulianni and Lindell tell the story, Smartmatic software is used on Dominion machines (it's not, the companies are competitors) and therefore, they can bring in the lies about Dominion (which is widely used in the U.S.).

The only way they could make the story about Dominion was to lie about Smartmatic.

Of course, both stories are untrue.

[amcgrath]

7. I'm no lover of lawyers

But Dominions team seem to be playing this one brilliantly. You will hear pundits claiming that the dollar amount they are suing for is too high. But loss of contracts is only part of this amount. It also includes claims for security costs and the pain and suffering of employees who received death threats. This is the kind of case where juries tend to go for huge compensation.

Then by accident or design, the first person prosecuted has such a flimsy case, that her legal defence is that her claims and assertions were so wildly ridiculous, that she couldn’t have expected people to listen to her. This looks like being a house of cards, where Dominion can recycle the same prosecution and take people down one by one. Each successful case strengthening the next.