WASHINGTON — Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, arguing the cable news giant falsely claimed in an effort to boost faltering ratings that the voting company rigged the 2020 election.
Friday's defamation lawsuit is the first filed against a media outlet by the Denver-based company at the center of false claims spread by President Donald Trump and his allies after Trump's election loss to Joe Biden.
Those claims helped spur on rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Some on-air reporting segments by New York-based Fox News have debunked some of the claims targeting Dominion.
Dominion has already filed lawsuits against pro-Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Earlier this week, Powell filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against her, saying that "reasonable" people should not have accepted her claims as fact.
A second voting systems company, Smartmatic, has already filed lawsuits against Fox News and several of its on-air personalities for spreading misinformation about the 2020 election.
