Vote-rigger label draws defamation suit
NEW YORK — An election systems worker who said he was driven into hiding by death threats has filed a defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s campaign, two of its lawyers and some conservative media figures and outlets.
Eric Coomer, security director at the Colorado company Dominion Voting Systems, said he wants his life back after being named in false allegations as a key actor in “rigging” the election for President-elect Joe Biden. There has been no evidence that the election was rigged.
His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in district court in Denver County, Colo., names the Trump campaign, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway Pundit, Colorado conservative activist Joseph Oltmann, and conservative media outlets Newsmax and One America News Network.
“I have been thrust into the public spotlight by people with political and financial agendas but, at heart, I am a private person,” Coomer said in a statement.
“While I intend to do everything I can to recapture my prior lifestyle, I have few illusions in this regard,” he said. “And so, today, I put my trust in the legal process, which has already exposed the truth of the 2020 presidential election.”
Dominion, which provided vote-counting equipment to several states, has denied accusations that it switched Trump votes in Biden’s favor, and no evidence has emerged to back those allegations.
Dominion and another voting technology company, Smartmatic, have begun to fight back against being named in the conspiracy theories. Facing legal threats, Fox News Channel and Newsmax in recent days have aired retractions of some claims made on their outlets.
There was no immediate comment from those named in the lawsuit.
Coomer’s lawyers said he has become “the face of the false claims.” Coomer’s name first got public exposure in a podcast by Oltmann, who claimed to have heard a strategy call of antifa activists. When the prospect of a Trump victory was brought up, Oltmann said, a man identified as “Eric from Dominion” supposedly said, “Don’t worry about the election; Trump is not going to win. I made … sure of that.”
In an opinion piece written for the Denver Post, Coomer wrote that he has no connections to antifa, that he was never on any call and that the idea that there is some recording of him is “wholly fabricated.”
The fact-checking website Snopes.com said Oltmann hasn’t cooperated in any attempts to verify his claims.
Oltmann also said Coomer made anti-Trump comments on Facebook. The lawsuit acknowledged that Coomer made comments critical of the president on his private
Facebook page; he now says his page is inactive.
Oltmann’s allegations spread after he was interviewed by Malkin and the Gateway Pundit. Eric Trump, the president’s son, tweeted about them. OANN, and its White House correspondent Chanel Rion, reported on them. Powell, misidentifying Coomer as working for Smartmatic, said at a news conference that Coomer’s “social media is filled with hatred” for Trump, and she later repeated her allegations in a Newsmax interview.
According to the lawsuit, Giuliani at a news conference said Coomer was “a vicious, vicious man. He wrote horrible things about the president. … He is completely warped.”
Fox News Channel, another outlet popular with Trump supporters, is not being sued, and Coomer actually uses Fox’s Tucker Carlson in an attempt to buttress his case. The lawsuit notes a scheduled Powell appearance on Carlson’s show that did not happen after she could not provide evidence for her allegations.