Smartmatic accuses Fox News, Rupert Murdoch of destroying evidence in 2020 election defamation case

By Marshall Cohen, CNN

Washington (CNN) — A voting technology firm suing Fox News for defamation over its 2020 election coverage claimed senior corporate executives, including Rupert Murdoch, intentionally destroyed damning evidence in the case, according to court filings.

Smartmatic levied the stunning new allegations on Wednesday, alleging in court filings that Fox “orchestrated the destruction of text messages across all levels of their corporate hierarchy… despite a clear duty to preserve evidence.”

In the highly redacted filings, Smartmatic claimed Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch were among the Fox officials who “deleted their texts” in an “extensive and willful” fashion — and not by accident. Rupert Murdoch was chairman of Fox Corporation during the 2020 election, and his son was CEO. The elder Murdoch stepped down in 2023 and his son became Fox Corp. chairman.

A Fox spokesperson said the latest allegations from Smartmatic were a “desperate attempt to distract” from a recent evidentiary ruling that was decided in the network’s favor.

“Smartmatic weakly attempts to resurrect stale, baseless discovery issues that actually were disclosed by Fox and resolved two years ago,” the Fox spokesperson said. “These issues have no bearing on the merits of Smartmatic’s case, which has fallen apart at every turn.”

Smartmatic claimed the deleted texts were from November and December 2020, when numerous Fox hosts promoted the debunked lie that Smartmatic machines rigged that year’s presidential election against President Donald Trump.

Evidence from a related case established that around the same time, Rupert Murdoch and other top Fox officials – as well as on-air hosts, producers, and fact-checkers – said they did not believe the claims of massive voter fraud that were being promoted on Fox News’ shows.

“Fox has eliminated contemporaneous texts that would have revealed further evidence of what Fox executives knew about the falsity of their broadcasts,” Smartmatic lawyers wrote in the filing. “While it championed election fraud on air, behind the scenes Fox ensured that many of its executives’ incriminating communications would never see daylight.”

The long-running lawsuit doesn’t yet have a trial date in New York state court. Smartmatic asked the judge overseeing the case to tell the eventual jury that Fox destroyed evidence, and that they can assume that the evidence would’ve hurt Fox’s defense.

The right-wing network denies wrongdoing and says the case threatens First Amendment press freedoms. Fox’s lawyers have said Smartmatic is “a failing election company that was in financial free fall” and the lawsuit is nothing more than a “meritless cash grab.”

The latest evidentiary squabbles come as both sides try to strengthen their hand before a trial, or in potential settlement negotiations, which are commonly how major defamation cases are resolved.

On Tuesday, an appeals court granted Fox News access to documents about a separate federal bribery indictment against senior Smartmatic executives, which the network believes will bolster its defense in the defamation lawsuit. (The defendants in that bribery case have pleaded not guilty and Smartmatic has denied any wrongdoing.)

Lawyers for Fox have argued that Smartmatic isn’t entitled to the billions of dollars its seeking in damages because its reputation was already tarnished by its controversial foreign dealings, as highlighted by the alleged Philippines bribery scheme laid out in the federal indictment.

Earlier in the litigation, which has been ongoing since February 2021, Smartmatic faced accusations from Fox of improperly deleting materials, which the voting company denied.

A New York appeals court ruled that Smartmatic needed to provide Fox with some of its internal communications about deleting text messages. A Fox spokesperson said Wednesday that the network would soon file its own motion outlining this “massive failure to preserve evidence” by Smartmatic.

The-CNN-Wire
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