Voting machine firm sues Guiliani for $1.3B

WASHINGTON — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election.

The lawsuit seeks more than $1.3 billion in damages for the voting machine company, a target for conservatives who made up wild claims about the company, blaming it for Trump’s loss and alleging without evidence that its systems were easily manipulated. Dominion is one of the nation’s top voting machine companies and provided machines for the state of Georgia, the critical battleground that Biden won and that flipped control of the U.S. Senate.

The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden.

Dominion’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, is among the first major signs of fallout for the former president’s allies and the failed effort to subvert the 2020 election that ended with a Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that claimed the election had been stolen.

“For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” the lawsuit says. “Giuliani’s statements were calculated to — and did in fact — provoke outrage and cause Dominion enormous harm.”

There was no widespread fraud in the election, which a range of election officials across the country including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed.