The 2024 presidential contest is effectively underway, however groups of legal professionals are nonetheless poring over the 2020 election, and for an excellent purpose: They’re making an attempt to carry Donald Trump’s allies accountable for the harm accomplished by their election lies. Civil lawsuits by firms like Dominion Voting Techniques are progressing on the similar time that Trump is going through felony trials in a number of jurisdictions. “Now we have a lot work forward of us,” Stephen Shackelford says on this week’s episode of Contained in the Hive.
Shackelford was one of many lead attorneys in Dominion’s lawsuit towards Fox Information, which resulted within the media large paying $787.5 million in April to settle that case. In accordance with Davida Brook, one other one of many lead attorneys, Dominion has “lawsuits pending towards Newsmax, One America Information, Mike Lindell and MyPillow, Sidney Powell and her legislation agency, Rudy Giuliani, and Patrick Byrne.” These circumstances, she says, are “all continuing in direction of trial.”
Host Brian Stelter interviewed Shackelford and Brook a number of occasions for his new guide, Community of Lies, which hits cabinets November 14. (Vainness Truthful not too long ago revealed an excerpt from the guide about Tucker Carlson’s abrupt exit.) On Contained in the Hive, Stelter shares a few of his reporting from the guide and asks the attorneys concerning the pending circumstances. Shackelford says Dominion was “put by hell” by Trump’s election lies in 2020—“hell that continues to today.”
Brook says the continuing litigation is about “setting the file straight”—which is what Dominion’s PR representatives referred to as their fact-checking emails that Fox acquired in November 2020. “The reality was in Fox’s inbox,” Shackelford says. And but Fox stars like Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs hyped conspiracy theories about Dominion as a substitute.
The legal professionals at the moment are making ready for depositions. The fits are shifting extra slowly than the Fox case “as a result of most of them are in DC, and the DC courts are very busy, nonetheless to today, with loads of the January 6 circumstances,” Shackelford says. The courts in Delaware, the place Dominion sued Fox, “have historically moved at a faster tempo.” Dominion’s case towards Newsmax is poised for a September 2024 trial in Delaware—if there isn’t a settlement first. “We’ve acquired an extended street forward to complete up this work for Dominion,” Shackelford says.
One other election know-how firm, Smartmatic, can also be suing Fox, Newsmax, and different defendants. “Smartmatic is a worldwide firm that was injured on a worldwide scale,” lawyer J. Erik Connolly advised Stelter for the guide. “The damages are a lot larger.”
