(FiveNation.com)- After a New York trial judge refused to dismiss most of Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and two of its hosts, Fox filed an answer and counterclaim on Thursday, alleging that Smartmatic has been losing money for decades.
In February 2021, the voting technology company had sued Fox News and several on-air hosts for defamation for their coverage of the 2020 presidential election.
Fox attempted to have the $2.7 billion lawsuit thrown out, but the judge, NYS Supreme Court Justice David Cohen refused to dismiss most of the suit against Fox, host Maria Bartiromo, and former Fox host Lou Dobbs. Judge Jeanine Pirro, however, was dismissed as a defendant.
In last week’s filing, Fox denied liability and presented a counterclaim against Smartmatic’s demand for $2.7 billion in supposed losses in revenue, calling it “extravagant” and “divorced from reality.”
Fox argued that Smartmatic premised the amount on the claim that it was poised to make nearly $2 billion in annual revenue in 2025, but in reality, Smartmatic had been “losing money hand over fist for the better part of the decade.”
The counterclaim includes a report by an expert hired by Fox to examine Smartmatic’s finances. The report shows the $2 billion projected annual revenue claimed by Smartmatic is more than four times the highest revenue the company made in the previous nine years and 16 times what it made in 2020.
What’s more, Fox argues in its counterclaim, it is “fanciful” for Smartmatic to claim “these phantom losses” would be caused by “a handful of segments on Fox News.”
In the counterclaim, Fox said it has incurred “already-significant costs” in defending itself against “Smartmatic’s novel legal theories,” arguing that now it has to incur more cost to “debunk Smartmatic’s multibillion-dollar damages claim.”
Fox contends that Smartmatic’s claim of damages is “divorced from reality,” calling it “a naked attempt to grab the kind of attention” the Anti-SLAPP “is supposed to guard against.”
Similar documents were filed on behalf of Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo.
