Court Grants Fox News Additional Discovery in Smartmatic Case - But Allows Case to Move Forward

Source: MEDIAite

May 9th, 2026, 12:01 am


A New York appeals court granted Fox News some additional discovery rights to defend against Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit — but that discovery will be of limited use as a potential defense and the court also allowed the case to continue toward trial.

The litigation so far

In 2021, Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox, alleging that the network’s coverage falsely accused the voting technology company of committing fraud in the 2020 election to steal the victory from President Donald Trump and give it to President Joe Biden, and that these false statements damaged the company’s reputation and resulted in its employees being subjected to death threats and harassment.

The case has a number of similarities with the defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by another voting technology company, Dominion Voting Systems, which settled in April 2023 for a stunning $787.5 million just as the trial was ready to begin in Delaware.

Discovery in the Dominion case revealed a trove of emails, text messages, and other communications between the network’s executives and on-air personalities admitting they knew the election fraud claims were false, mocking Trump’s attorneys and surrogates as “crazy” for pushing them, and fretting about falling in the ratings to upstart competitors like Newsmax and OANN if they didn’t indulge MAGA viewers.

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/lawcrime/court-grants-fox-news-additional-discovery-in-smartmatic-case-but-allows-case-to-move-forward/