The 'Red Slime' Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing Media

[Nevilledog]

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Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
This is a big deal.
Last week, a lawyer for Antonio Mugica sent scathing letters to Fox, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name.
The ‘Red Slime’ Lawsuit That Could Sink Right-Wing Media
Voting machine companies threaten “highly dangerous” cases against Fox, Newsmax and OAN, says Floyd Abrams.
nytimes.com
7:51 PM · Dec 20, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/business/media/smartmatic-lawsuit-fox-news-newsmax-oan.html

Antonio Mugica was in Boca Raton when an American presidential election really melted down in 2000, and he watched with shocked fascination as local government officials argued over hanging chads and butterfly ballots.

It was so bad, so incompetent, that Mr. Mugica, a young Venezuelan software engineer, decided to shift the focus of his digital security company, Smartmatic, which had been working for banks. It would offer its services to what would obviously be a growth industry: electronic voting machines. He began building a global company that ultimately provided voting machinery and software for elections from Brazil to Belgium and his native Venezuela. He even acquired an American company, then called Sequoia.

Last month, Mr. Mugica initially took it in stride when his company’s name started popping up in grief-addled Trump supporters’ wild conspiracy theories about the election.

“Of course I was surprised, but at the same time, it was pretty clear that these people were trying to discredit the election and they were throwing out 25 conspiracy theories in parallel,” he told me in an interview last week from Barbados, where his company has an office. “I thought it was so absurd that it was not going to have legs.”

But by Nov. 14, he knew he had a problem. That’s when Rudy Giuliani, serving as the president’s lawyer, suggested that one voting company, Dominion Voting Systems, had a sinister connection to vote counts in “Michigan, Arizona and Georgia and other states.” Mr. Giuliani declared on Twitter that the company “was a front for SMARTMATIC, who was really doing the computing. Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?”

*snip*

[sfdennis1]

1. Sue the b*stards

I hope the suit moves forward, I hope they are seeking huge $$ in damages and I hope there are DOZENS more lawsuits. Every time one of the Reich wing "media" slanders, lies, etc they NEED to be sued and have their false claims invalidated. We are in a full-blown CRISIS of propaganda, misinformation, lies and omitions, false narratives, anti-science bias, and conspiracy theories threatening the very fabric of our societal cohesion. The very "nature of what's real" is under attack, and we cannot and will not heal as a society when we share 2 (or more) "realities"..."My lies are just as valid as your facts" CANNOT continue to stand unchallenged.

[farmbo]

2. Fox & Newsmax know they can lie about public figures...

... but ‘Corporations are People’ so media lies and libels will have drastic consequences to their corporate bottom lines. That means seven or eight figure compensatory damage judgments, then add on punitive damages.
Added bonus: these are Civil— not criminal— cases, so in most jurisdictions they won’t need a unanimous jury verdict, thus eliminating the “hidden Trumpie” threat in criminal juries.

[SunSeeker]

3. Sue the shit out of them Antonio!

[MustLoveBeagles]

4. K&R

[ancianita]

5. Wow, interesting. Maybe that's why people have said to me that Venezuela was involved.

I never saw proof, so I thought they were nuts and looking for a fall guy.

Mutual disclosure might bring up all kinds of ugly, or nothing.

[Warpy]

6. All the lies have international implications

I'm not surprised OAN is echoing the worst of the lies, they're pretty much a subsidiary of RT and destabilizing democracy worldwide would seem to be a Putin dream. Pox and Newsmax have a bit more to lose in this one.

I would like to see the lot of them discredited, being forced to announce all day every day for months that they lied about the election.

I hope Mr. Mugica accepts nothing less.

[Cha]

7. Rt TY Nd! Will read more Now!

[NoMoreRepugs]

8. This has some real potential to do some damage to the smear machines I think.

[Blue Owl]

9. Proceed

Sue the goddamned motherfucking FUCK outta those fucking fucks!