Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
Reprinted with permission from AlterNet
Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump's embattled former personal attorney, has admitted under oath that his so-called evidence of voter fraud was based on Facebook posts, reports confirm.
According to Business Insider, Giuliani's remarks were part of a deposition that he completed on August 14 as part of a defamation lawsuit filed by Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems employee.
Coomer filed his lawsuit against the Trump campaign and other allies of the former president for circulating unfounded voter fraud conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. One theory even accused him of conspiring to "rig" the election in President Joe Biden's favor.
The deposition included a statement where Giuliani "admitted that he got some of his information about Coomer's alleged role in the election fraud from his social media posts but couldn't be sure if it was Facebook or another platform."
"Those social media posts get all one to me," Giuliani said.
When asked if he'd personally seen any other information connecting Coomer to fraud, Giuliani said, "Right now, I can't recall anything else that I laid eyes on."
The New York Times reported that the conspiracy theory about Coomer originated from baseless claims made by a right-wing podcast host named Joe Oltmann. He claimed to have listened in on an Antifa conference call where Coomer's name was mentioned. During that discussion, "Eric from Dominion" reportedly boasted about interfering with the election. Oltmann then claimed Coomer's Facebook page included anti-Trump messages; a claim that tied into his alleged efforts to rig the election.
Although Oltmann provided no evidence to support his claim, Trump's legal team ran with it. On November 19, they held a press conference and offered details about the basis of their legal pushback which was motivated by Otlmann's baseless claims.
"One of the Smartmatic patent holders, Eric Coomer, I believe his name is, is on the web as being recorded in a conversation with ANTIFA members saying that he had the election rigged for Mr. Biden," Giuliani said.
However, Coomer's lawyers argue that Giuliani "spent 'virtually no time' investigating the claims."
When asked why he regurgitated the claims without conducting proper research, Giuliani simply said he was too busy.
"It's not my job in a fast-moving case to go out and investigate every piece of evidence that's given to me," Giuliani said in the deposition, according to MSNBC.
Giuliani also made a futile attempt to defend his actions saying, "Why wouldn't I believe him? I would have to have been a terrible lawyer… gee, let's go find out it's untrue. I didn't have the time to do that."
Dominion Voting Systems dished out more billion dollar lawsuits on Tuesday-- filing defamation complaints against cable channels Newsmax and One America News (OAN), as well as former CEO of Overstock.com Patrick Byrne for allegedly lying about the company's role in the 2020 election.
"The defendants in today's filings recklessly disregarded the truth when they spread lies in November and continue to do so today," said Dominion CEO John Poulos. "We are filing these three cases today because the defendants named show no remorse, nor any sign they intend to stop spreading disinformation. This barrage of lies by the Defendants and others have caused—and continue to cause—severe damage to our company, customers, and employees. We have no choice but to seek to hold those responsible to account."
The Newsmax lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of Delaware, accused the channel of "creat[ing] an entire brand out of defaming."
In the OAN' lawsuit, filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia, Dominion charged that "facts did not matter" to the network. Instead, "what mattered was feeding the audience the alternate reality OAN had helped create and its audience now expected — even if it was spreading false information."
Byrne, a staunch Trump ally, "continues to stick to his manufactured, inherently improbable, profitable, and demonstrable lies," according to the complaint filed against him. Dominion legal counsel Stephen Shackelford added that Byrne "is responsible for bankrolling and promoting a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion that reached millions of people worldwide."
In response, Newsmax defended its coverage of the 2020 election.
"Newsmax simply reported on allegations made by well-known public figures, including the President, his advisors, and members of Congress -- Dominion's action today is a clear attempt to squelch such reporting and undermine a free press," a Newsmax spokesperson said in a statement.
But as ABC News notes, Newsmax has retracted some of its 2020 election reporting, much of which bolstered Trump's Big Lie, after the right-wing news channel reached a settlement in a lawsuit brought by a Dominion employee.
Byrne took a much more aggressive approach, saying through a spokesperson, "Between the imminent release of the Maricopa Audit, and Mike Lindell's current activities in South Dakota, Dominion Voting is about to have a very difficult week. They are simply doing this as a distraction."
OAN has yet to offer a public response to the Dominion lawsuit.
Since far-right Republicans made it their mission to spread baseless lies about the 2020 election, Dominion and other voting system companies have filed multiple defamation lawsuits against the biggest perpetrators.
Back in March, Fox News -- the largest conservative news channel --- was served a similar $1.6 billion lawsuit by Dominion. This followed a $2.7 billion Smartmatic USA defamation suit against the Murdoch outfit.
Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell have also felt Dominion's wrath in the wake of their deranged attempt to overturn the free and fair 2020 election.
"OAN, Newsmax, and Patrick Byrne have knowingly and continuously sold the false story of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, with Dominion cast as the villain, severely injuring Dominion in the process," said Shackelford, adding, "We are suing to set the record straight, to vindicate Dominion's rights, to hold the Defendants accountable, and to recover damages for the devastating economic harm done to Dominion's business."
Reprinted with permission from American Independent
Fox News has been hit with yet another massive lawsuit for peddling lies about fraud in the 2020 election.
Dominion Voting Systems on Friday sued the right-wing cable channel for $1.6 billion, alleging that Fox News knew the voting machine company did not engage in any fraud, yet peddled those lies because it was losing viewers to other far-right cable channels that were also telling those lies.
"Fox set out to lure viewers back — including President Trump himself — by intentionally and falsely blaming Dominion for President Trump's loss by rigging the election," Dominion said in the lawsuit.
The company's complaint said, "Fox News took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire" by airing "fictions" and giving them "a prominence they otherwise never would have achieved."
The lawsuit added, "The truth matters. Lies have consequences. Fox sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process."
This is now the second lawsuit Fox News faces for its lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
In February, Smartmatic USA sued Fox News and three of its hosts — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro — for $2.7 billion. Dobbs' show was taken off the air by the network the day after the lawsuit was filed.
Ultimately, multiple recounts, audits, and reviews of the election found there was no fraud, and that voting machine companies like Dominion did not switch votes — as Trump and his GOP allies have alleged.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the 2020 election was the "most secure in American history." Meanwhile, the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security released a joint report specifically debunking the claims that voting machine companies like Dominion switched votes from Trump to President Joe Biden.
After Dominion filed the lawsuit, Fox News issued a statement saying the outlet is "proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court."
However, Fox News in February aired a segment specifically fact-checking lies its own hosts had made about voter fraud.
The lies spread by Fox News hosts and contributors, as well as from Trump and other Republican lawmakers about voter fraud, have contributed to a massive GOP effort to suppress the vote in future elections.
Georgia's Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed a voter suppression law that requires ID to vote by mail, limits the use of drop boxes to hand in absentee ballots, allows Republican state election officials to take over county election boards run by Democrats, and even makes it a crime to hand out food and drink to voters waiting in line to vote. That law is already being challenged in court.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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