Smartmatic’s Mic Drop at the BEGINNING of the Lawsuit
As Ted Liu put it today, this is the best opening paragraph ever for a lawsuit:
1. The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.
2. Defendants have always known these facts. They knew Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 U.S. election. They knew the election was not stolen. They knew the election was not rigged or fixed. They knew these truths just as they knew the Earth is round and two plus two equals four.
3. Defendants did not want Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to win the election. They wanted President Donald Trump and Vice President Michael Pence to win re-election. Defendants were disappointed. But they also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story. Defendants decided to tell people that the election was stolen from President Trump and Vice President Pence.
These are the opening paragraphs of Smartmatic v. Fox News et al. (The et als include Rudy, Powell, Marie Baritaromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jenine Pirro), who are now all throwing up in their bathrooms since the suit is for a cool $2.7 BILLION for defamation. AND, since all their defamation was on national television, it’s going to be a really tough road for the defendants, no matter their bluster and bluffing now. This pleading is almost 3oo pages, and reads like a crime novel. Here are more juicy tidbits:
9. Millions of individuals who saw and read Defendants’ reports believed them to be true. Smartmatic and its officers began to receive hate mail and death threats. Smartmatic’s clients and potential clients began to panic. The company’s reputation for providing transparent, auditable, and secure election technology and software was irreparably harmed. Overnight, Smartmatic went from an under-the-radar election technology and software company with a track record of success to the villain in Defendants’ disinformation campaign.
11. The story, of course, did more than just make Defendants’ money and jeopardize Smartmatic’s survival. The story undermined people’s belief in democracy. The story turned neighbor against neighbor. The story led a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. Defendants started a fire for selfish and financial reasons and they cared not the damage their story caused to Smartmatic, its officers and employees, and the country.
This one is going to be good. And, with any luck, will end the careers of more than a few of these cretins.
Not to prognosticate, but it may be time to buy in to Smartmatic.
1Dominion just sent letters to the social platforms asking them to preserve posts, and offered a glimpse at their target list:
https://twitter.com/benyt/status/1357471235186122752
2And whatever brand of mics their attorneys prefer to drop.
3Perhaps I’m just pathologically pessimistic, but I’m not holding my breath.
4Sometimes, but just sometimes, lawyers can do such good things. And Smartmatic seem to have found some delightfully pugnacious ones.
5And for any remaining idiots who continue prancing around in clothes from 250 years ago while shouting “unconstitutional!” or “constitutional!” because they still believe the election was stolen, Smartmatic could phrase it this way:
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
6‘We lie to ourselves in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes.’
~ Aldous Huxley
7Marie Baritaromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro … that might bring back the Fairness Doctrine with ahead of the necessary legislation.
8I’m surprised Hannity isn’t on this list.
9With the right outcome, this could be as good as bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.
10Since Smartmatic was used in only one county in 2020, it is going to be difficult for the defense to assert 1) that Smartmatic was capable of affecting the vote totals; or 2) that the defendants did acted reasonably prudently before disseminating the accusations of fraud.
11Smartmatic has an interesting page I don’t believe I’ve ever seen on a corporate website: Smartmatic Fact-checked:
https://www.smartmatic.com/us/smartmatic-fact-checked/
I’m uncertain how they arrived at the claimed damages of $2.7 billion. The best estimate I could quickly find says their Est. Annual Revenue is $226M.
12An old math prof joke, 2+2 can equal 5, for large values of two, and small values of 5.
13Thanks for the laugh!
In other news, all TX Rs in the House seem to have voted to keep Greene on her committees. So now we can call them Q-TX, right?
14It is, however, sad that Democracy has to be saved (at least in part) by a corporate lawsuit for damages.
15Smartmatic was used only in LA county (and good luck trying to prove that it would otherwise have voted for T****). But Sidney Powell has claimed that the Smarmatic code is in the DNA of the systems and software of all voting machines. I want to see the evidence submitted to the court for that one.
After 55 years in computer science and adjacent fields, I never heard that software has DNA. There were some attempts to use DNA as a substrate for computations, but apparently Darwin said “nope”. Already colleagues of mine are filling the Innertubes with inside jokes about Powell’s claims. All of us are eagerly awaiting the evidence she plans on submitting to the courts on this.
16Professor, I’d be impressed if she knows what DNA stands for.
17My only objection is to the assertion that he election was not rigged. Of course it was rigged. Gerrymandering, voter role culls, demands for more id’s, limiting numbers of voting stations in liberal areas, and screwing with the USPS all were attempts to rig the election. DJT’s objection was that the GOP hadn’t rigged the election for his sorry ass to win.
Asserting that there was no rigging of the election seems like giving up half the wider argument to simplify and clarify one small aspect of the larger issue.
They should have said there was no election rigging by or for the Democratic party or its candidates.
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