Dominion sues Giuliani over election claims
Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer for Donald Trump and former mayor of New York City who played a key role in the former president’s months-long effort to subvert the 2020 election.
The 107-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, accuses Giuliani of carrying out “a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion” made up of “demonstrably false” allegations, in part to enrich himself through legal fees and his podcast.
The suit seeks damages of more than $1.3 billion and is based on more than 50 statements Giuliani made at legislative hearings, on Twitter, on his podcast and in the conservative news media, where he spun a fictitious narrative of a plot by one of the biggest voting machine manufacturers in the country to flip votes to President Joe Biden.
Giuliani, one of Trump’s closest advisers and confidants, has faced continuing fallout for his highly visible efforts to reverse the election outcome. This month, the chairman of the New York state Senate’s judiciary committee formally requested that the state court system strip Giuliani of his law license.
In a statement released by text message late Monday morning, Giuliani said that the lawsuit amounted to intimidation and that he was contemplating a countersuit.
“Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for $1.3B will allow me to investigate their history, finances, and practices fully and completely,” Giuliani said. “The amount being asked for is, quite obviously, intended to frighten people of faint heart. It is another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left-wing to wipe out and censor the exercise of free speech, as well as the ability of lawyers to defend their clients vigorously. As such, we will investigate a countersuit against them for violating these constitutional rights.”
On his radio show Monday afternoon, Giuliani seemed to welcome a trial.
“We’ll have a nice fight, a real fight, and by fight, I don’t mean,
don’t mean any words of violence,” Giuliani said. “I fight in the courtroom, you know? That’s what I always mean when I talk about fight. We fight in the courtroom. We fight in the debate hall. I got a pretty good record in court. And I’m a damn good investigator.”
Taken together with a lawsuit the company filed this month against Sidney Powell, another lawyer who was allied with Trump, the suit represents a point-by-point rebuke of one of the more outlandish conspiracy theories surrounding last year’s election. The president’s allies had contended that the voting machine company — which was also used in states during Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, has been tested by government agencies and was used in states that Trump carried in 2020 — was somehow involved in a rigged election, partly as a result of ties to a longdeceased Venezuelan dictator.
“Dominion was not founded in Venezuela to fix elections for Hugo Chávez,” the suit says. “It was founded in 2002 in John Poulos’ basement in Toronto to help blind people vote on paper ballots.”
The suit later adds that the headquarters for the company’s U.S. subsidiary is in Denver.
Laying out a timeline of Giuliani’s comments about Dominion on Twitter, his podcast and Fox News, the company notes that Giuliani avoided mentioning Dominion in court, where he could have faced legal ramifications for falsehoods.
“Notably, not a single one of the three complaints signed and filed by Giuliani and other attorneys for the Trump Campaign in the Pennsylvania action contained any allegations about Dominion,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also links Giuliani’s false statements about Dominion to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, noting that he mentioned the company in his speech at a rally for Trump before the attack, as well as numerous times on social media as the Capitol was breached.
“Having been deceived by Giuliani and his allies into thinking that they were not criminals — but patriots ‘Defend(ing) the Republic’ from Dominion and its co-conspirators — they then bragged about their involvement in the crime on social media,” the suit states.
Thomas A. Clare, a lawyer representing Dominion, said that the riot had not factored into the decision to sue Giuliani but that it did show just how seriously Trump’s followers had taken the falsehoods told about the election.
“From a defamation law perspective, it just demonstrates the depth to which these statements sink in to people,” Clare said. “That people don’t just read them and tune them out. It goes to the core of their belief system, which puts them in a position to take action in the real world.”
Poulos, chief executive officer of Dominion, said that his company had taken legal action against Giuliani both to correct the record about Dominion and restore trust in U.S. electoral systems.
“Not only have these lies damaged the good name of my company,” Poulos said of Giuliani’s false claims, “but they also undermined trust in American democratic institutions, drowning out the remarkable work of elections officials and workers, who ensured a transparent and secure election. The thousands of hand recounts and audits that proved machines counted accurately continue to be overshadowed by disinformation.”
Dominion is a major manufacturer of voting machine equipment in the United States, second only to Election Systems & Software. Different models of Dominion machines were used in more than two dozen states — red, blue and battleground — during the 2020 election.
The company previously warned Giuliani, sending a letter in late December that told him to preserve all records of his claims and stop making false statements, and warned that legal action was imminent. But Giuliani continued with his false claims of fraud, even arguing on Twitter days after receiving the letter that “phony Dominion voting machines” needed to be investigated.
As recently as last week, Giuliani was on his New York City-based radio show saying that “so long as you have Dominion, there is clear and present danger” that election results could be rigged. He added that he had “boxes of evidence to support his claims.”
Dominion has indicated that it plans to file more lawsuits. The suit against Giuliani says he acted with other prominent conservatives and news networks, including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax and One America News Network.
Clare left open the possibility of litigation against Trump.
“We’re not ruling anybody out,” he said.
Dominion argues that Giuliani profited significantly from his false claims, noting that he “reportedly demanded $20,000 per day” for his legal services to Trump and “cashed in by hosting a podcast where he exploited election falsehoods to market gold coins, supplements, cigars and protection from ‘cyberthieves.’ ”