Fox News to hand over additional documents in Smartmatic case

Fox News has agreed to provide additional documents and legal materials from the recent case it settled with Dominion Voting Systems to Smartmatic, a second voting systems company that is suing the network for defamation.

“We will produce the materials as quickly as we are able to,” Fox lawyer Winn Allen said during a hearing in New York, CNN reported.

Smartmatic is seeking more than $2 billion from Fox, accusing it of maliciously giving Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani a platform to air false claims about the 2020 presidential election and its software.

Fox last week agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle the defamation case brought by Dominion, one of the largest payouts by a media company to a plaintiff ever.

A trial in the Smartmatic case is likely months or years away, but Fox lost its first bid to toss the company’s suit, allowing it to move onto discovery. 

“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” a spokesperson for the network said in its most recent statement about the case.

“As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms,” they added.