Dominion tells social media firms to keep posts for defamation suits

SAN FRANCISCO — Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems have asked Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Parler to preserve posts about the company, even if the material was already removed for spreading misinformation.

The posts need to be kept “because they are relevant to Dominion’s defamation claims relating to false accusations that Dominion rigged the 2020 election,” according to the demand letters from Dominion’s law firm, Clare Locke. Dominion sued Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for more than $1.3 billion each in January, alleging that the lawyers defamed Dominion by saying the machines were used to steal the election from President Donald Trump.

Dominion asked each company to keep posts from slightly differing lists of people. Those included right-wing pundit Dan Bongino, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Powell. It also included news organizations Fox News, One America News Networkand Newsmax and — in Twitter's case — Trump.

Dominion warned in its letters to the social media companies that more lawsuits would be coming.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all have policies against spreading election-related misinformation. They have been removing — with varying degrees of success — posts falsely suggesting the election had been rigged since the baseless rumors began spreading in November. Parler was effectively knocked offline in January when Amazon, Apple and Google stopped providing it technical services for violating their policies against online posts that incite violence.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Parler did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the demands to preserve posts. Often material will remain in the company's servers even if it has been deleted off their sites. Trump's tweets, which are no longer visible on Twitter after he was banned last month, have also been archived by many independent organizations.

Fox News pointed to a series of on-air comments of hosts and guests refuting vote tampering. Newsmax and One America News Network did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lawmakers are probing the role of social media sites in the spread of election disinformation after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.