Smartmatic is pursuing its defamation lawsuit against conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell — just in a different court than it initially planned.The election technology company included Powell — a lawyer who pursued several failed lawsuits that alleged Smartmatic and rival company Dominion manipulated the results of the 2020 election against then-President Donald Trump and in favor of now-President Joe Biden — as a defendant in a wide-ranging, $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed in February 2021.The lawsuit, filed in New York state court, was filed against Powell, fellow 2020 election conspiracy theorist Rudy Giuliani, Fox News, and several Fox News hosts.On March 8, New York State Supreme Court Judge David B.Cohen tossed out the portions of the lawsuit.
He denied the claims against Powell, in particular, on jurisdictional grounds, ruling that her false claims about Smartmatic rigging the election weren’t sufficiently tied to the state of New York.
(Cohen still upheld several of Smartmatic’s claims against Giuliani and Fox News ; Fox News says it plans to appeal the ruling.) But in November, Smartmatic filed a backup lawsuit against Powell in federal court in Washington, DC.In court filings, the company expressly told the judge it was a way to stake a claim against Powell in case the New York state judge dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds.Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Smartmatic told Insider that the company was weighing whether to appeal the New York decision or press forward with its case in federal court in DC.Now, its made its decision.In a filing Tuesday, lawyers for Smartmatic said it wanted Powell to respond to the claims in DC.”Plaintiffs do not intend to pursue an appeal of Powell’s dismissal from the New York Action for lack of personal jurisdiction,” they wrote.
“The parties respectfully recommend that this Court set a schedule for Ms.Powell to answer or otherwise plead to the complaint in this matter.” Powell is expected to file a response by May 6, the filing says.Dominion Voting Systems, a rival election technology company, has also filed its own lawsuit against Powell in federal court in DC.Like Smartmatic, it’s suing Powell over her false conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 election results.
In August, the judge overseeing Dominion’s lawsuit rejected Powell’s motion to dismiss it .In his ruling, he wrote that Powell may have fabricated sections of exhibits and that one “expert” she cited in her lawsuits was clearly a conspiracy theorist.”That expert has also publicly claimed that George Soros, President George H.W.Bush’s father, the Muslim Brotherhood, and ‘leftists’ helped form the ‘Deep State’ in Nazi Germany in the 1930s — which would have been a remarkable feat for Soros, who was born in 1930,” he wrote.
The same judge, Carl J.Nichols, was assigned to oversee Smartmatic’s lawsuit..
