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    Voting company sues Fox and Trump lawyers for $2.7bn over false claims of election fraud

    A voting technology company is suing Fox News, three of its top hosts and two former lawyers for Donald Trump – Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell – for $2.7bn.The lawsuit charges that the defendants conspired to spread false claims that the company helped “steal” the US presidential election, which was in fact fairly won by Joe Biden.The 285-page complaint filed on Thursday in New York state court by Florida-based Smartmatic USA is one of the largest libel suits ever undertaken.On 25 January, a rival election-technology company, Dominion Voting Systems, which was also ensnared in Trump’s baseless effort to overturn the election, sued Guiliani and Powell for $1.3bn.Unlike Dominion, whose technology was used in 24 states, Smartmatic’s participation in the 2020 election was restricted to Los Angeles county, which votes heavily Democratic.Smartmatic’s limited role notwithstanding, Fox aired at least 13 reports falsely stating or implying the company had stolen the 2020 vote in cahoots with Venezuela’s socialist government, according to the complaint.This alleged “disinformation campaign” continued even after the then attorney general, William Barr, said the Department of Justice could find no evidence of widespread voter fraud.For instance, a 10 December segment by Lou Dobbs accused Smartmatic and its CEO, Antonio Mugica, of working to flip votes through a non-existent backdoor in its voting software to carry out a “massive cyber Pearl Harbor”, the complaint alleged.“Defendants’ story was a lie,” the complaint stated. “But, it was a story that sold.”The complaint alleges that the Fox hosts Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro also directly benefitted from their involvement in the conspiracy.The lawsuit alleges that Fox went along with the “well-orchestrated dance” due to pressure from newcomer outlets such as Newsmax and One America News, which were stealing away conservative, pro-Trump viewers.Fox, Giuliani and Powell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.For Smartmatic, the effects of the negative publicity were swift and devastating, the complaint alleges.Death threats, including against an executive’s 14-year-old son, poured in as internet searches for the company surged, Smartmatic claims.With several client contracts in jeopardy, the company estimates that it will lose as much as $690m in profits over the next five years.It also expects it will have to boost spending by $4.7m to fend off what it called a “meteoric rise” in cyberattacks.“For us, this is an existential crisis,” Mugica said in an interview. He said the false statements against Smartmatic had already led one foreign bank to close its accounts and deterred Taiwan, a prospective client, from adopting e-voting technology.Like many conspiracy theories, the alleged campaign against Smartmatic was built on a grain of truth.Mugica is Venezuelan and Smartmatic’s initial success is partly attributable to major contracts from Hugo Chavez’s government, an early devotee of electronic voting.No evidence has emerged that the company rigged votes in favor of Chavez, and for a while the Carter Center and other observers held out Venezuela as a model of electronic voting.Meanwhile, the company has expanded globally. Smartmatic is represented by J Erik Connolly, who previously won what is believed to be the largest settlement in American media defamation, at least $177m, for a report on ABC News describing a company’s beef product as “pink slime”.“Very rarely do you see news organization go day after day after day the same targets,” Connolly said in an interview.“We couldn’t possibly have rigged this election because we just weren’t even in the contested states to do the rigging.” More

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    Giuliani attacks 'censorship' but made threat to sue paper over unflattering story

    On Monday, Rudy Giuliani called a $1.3bn lawsuit brought against him by Dominion Voting Systems “another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left wing to wipe out and censor the exercise of free speech”. But Giuliani has himself previously threatened to censor the exercise of free speech with legal action.
    The former New York mayor turned Trump attorney was invoking current rightwing complaints against so-called “cancel culture”, in which freedom of speech is supposedly curtailed.
    But in June 2001, the New York Post ran a story about an extra-marital affair. Giuliani told reporters: “I will consider suing them for libel – defamation. What the New York Post did is scurrilous, I believe it’s malicious and I’m prepared to prove that in court if I have to.”
    First amendment protection of freedom of the press makes it difficult for US public officials to mount libel lawsuits, even if reports are proved to be wrong. Giuliani did not take the Post to court.
    On Monday, Dominion sued Giuliani in federal court in Washington, over his claims about supposed electoral fraud, made as part of Donald Trump’s baseless attempts to overturn defeat by Joe Biden, efforts which culminated in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.
    “Dominion brings this action to set the record straight,” the complaint said, “to vindicate the company’s rights under civil law, to recover compensatory and punitive damages, and to stand up for itself, its employees, and the electoral process.”
    Dominion’s lawyer, Thomas Clare, told the New York Times the company could sue others, including Trump.
    “We’re not ruling anybody out,” he said. “Obviously, this lawsuit against the president’s lawyer moves one step closer to the former president and understanding what his role was and wasn’t.”
    Some experts said Dominion might itself count as a public figure, and thus have a hard time winning its case.
    Giuliani said he might counter-sue Dominion.
    “The amount being asked for is, quite obviously, intended to frighten people of faint heart. It is another act of intimidation by the hate-filled left wing to wipe out and censor the exercise of free speech, as well as the ability of lawyers to defend their clients vigorously. As such, we will investigate a countersuit against them for violating these constitutional rights,” he said.
    It remains to be seen if Giuliani will follow through. Nearly 20 years ago, he did not.
    Giuliani threatened to sue the Post over its story about how, as the New York Daily News described it, the mayor and his “girlfriend Judith Nathan [were] using the posh St Regis Hotel as a ‘secret love nest’”.
    Negotiations between Giuliani and the Post followed but nearly six weeks later, on 18 July, the Daily News reported that Giuliani had not made good on his threat.
    “When I’m ready to decide, you’ll be the first to know,” he said. “But I don’t get rushed into anything.” More

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    Dominion Voting Systems sues Giuliani for $1.3bn over baseless election claims

    Complaint accuses ex-mayor of having ‘manufactured and disseminated’ conspiracy theory related to voting machinesUS politics – live updatesDominion Voting Systems, the voting equipment manufacturer at the centre of baseless election fraud conspiracy theories pushed by Donald Trump and his allies, has sued the former president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit. Related: Schumer promises quick but fair trial as Trump impeachment heads to Senate Continue reading… More

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    Saving Justice review: how Trump's Eye of Sauron burned everything – including James Comey

    With the storming of the Capitol, the fired FBI director’s earnest attempt to help America recover has been overtaken by eventsComey: Trump should not be prosecuted after leaving officeA centuries-old norm has been broken. The inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will not mark the peaceful transition of power. On Wednesday, American carnage arrived. Five people including a police officer are dead. Related: After Trump review: a provocative case for reform by Biden and beyond Continue reading… More

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    Trump attempted a coup: he must be removed while those who aided him pay | Robert Reich

    A swift impeachment is imperative but from Rudy Giuliani and Don Jr to Fox News and Twitter, the president did not act aloneInsurrection: the day terror came to the US CapitolCall me old-fashioned, but when the president of the United States encourages armed insurgents to breach the Capitol and threaten the physical safety of Congress, in order to remain in power, I call it an attempted coup. Related: Saving Justice review: how Trump’s Eye of Sauron burned everything – including James Comey Continue reading… More

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    Trump attempt to overturn election is 'nutty and loopy', Romney says

    Donald Trump’s flirtation with declaring martial law in battleground states and appointing a conspiracy theorist as special counsel to help his attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden are “really sad” and “nutty and loopy”, Mitt Romney said on Sunday.“He’s leaving Washington with a whole series of conspiracy theories and things that are so nutty and loopy that people are shaking their head wondering what in the world has gotten into this man,” the Utah Republican senator said.Joe Biden won the 3 November election by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. Nonetheless, Trump is entertaining outlandish schemes to remain in office, egged on by allies like former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump pardoned for lying to the FBI, and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.During a Friday meeting at the White House first reported by the New York Times, Trump discussed security clearance for Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-spouting attorney who was cut from Trump’s campaign legal team.It is unclear if Trump will actually attempt to install Powell as a special counsel, a position which the US attorney general, not the president, appoints. Numerous Republicans, from outgoing attorney general William Barr to governors and state officials, have said repeatedly there is no evidence of the mass voter fraud Trump baselessly alleges.“It’s not going to happen,” Romney told CNN. “That’s going nowhere. And I understand the president is casting about trying to find some way to have a different result than the one that was delivered by the American people, but it’s really sad in a lot of respects and embarrassing.“Because the president could right now be writing the last chapter of this administration, with a victory lap with regards to the [Covid-19] vaccine. After all he pushed aggressively to get the vaccine developed and distributed, that’s happening on a quick timeframe. He could be going out and championing this extraordinary success.“Instead … this last chapter suggests what he is going to be known for.”Trump’s campaign and allies have filed around 50 lawsuits alleging voting fraud – almost all have been dismissed. Trump has lost before judges of both parties, including some he appointed, and some of the strongest rebukes have come from conservative Republicans. The supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority and three Trump appointees, has refused to take up cases.Trump has been fuming and peppering allies for options. During the Friday meeting, Giuliani pushed Trump to seize voting machines. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made clear that it had no authority to do so. It is unclear what such a move could accomplish.Barr told the Associated Press this month the Department of Justice and DHS had looked into claims voting machines “were programmed essentially to skew the election results … and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that”. Paper ballots have been used to verify results, including in Georgia, which performed two audits of its vote tally, confirming Biden’s victory.Flynn went yet further, suggesting Trump could impose martial law and use the military to re-run the election. Chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone voiced objections, people familiar with the meeting told news outlets. Trump, who spent much of Saturday tweeting and retweeting electoral fraud claims, responded on Twitter.“Martial law = Fake News,” he wrote. “Just more knowingly bad reporting!”Trump’s grip on the Republican party remains secure, suggesting members in Congress will dutifully raise objections to the electoral college results on 6 January. Such objections will be for political ends and will not in all likelihood succeed in overturning the election. Democrats hold the House and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he will knock down objections in the Senate.On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Romney, who did better at the polls in his 2012 defeat by Barack Obama than Trump did in 2016 and 2020, was asked if his party could ever escape Trump’s grip.“I believe the Republican party has changed pretty dramatically,” he said. “And by that, I mean that the people who consider themselves Republican and voted for President Trump I think is a different cohort than the cohort that voted for me.“…You look at those that are thinking about running in 2024, [they are] trying to see who can be the most like President Trump. And that suggests that the party doesn’t want to take a different direction.”Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas are among senators thought likely to run to succeed Trump in the White House, and therefore likely to object to the electoral college results.“I don’t think anyone who’s looking at running in 2024 has the kind of style and shtick that President Trump has,” Romney said. “He has a unique and capable politician … But I think the direction you’re seeing is one that he set out.“I’d like to see a different version of the Republican party. But my side is very small these days … I think we recognise that character actually does count.” More

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    Hunter Biden says US attorney’s office is investigating his ‘tax affairs’

    President-elect Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, said on Wednesday that the US attorney’s office in Delaware had opened an investigation into his “tax affairs”.Hunter Biden, who has long been a target of Donald Trump and his allies, said he had learned about the federal investigation on Tuesday from his lawyer, who was informed of the matter by the US attorney’s office earlier that day.“I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisers,” Hunter Biden said in a statement released by the president-elect’s transition office.Trump and his allies have sought to tarnish his political opponent Joe Biden with unproven corruption charges involving his son. Trump’s early pursuit of these unsubstantiated allegations resulted in his impeachment, after he pressured the newly elected president of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden’s work in the country while his father was vice-president.Nevertheless, the president remained fixated on Hunter Biden throughout the campaign season, aided by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his Republican supporters on Capitol Hill. A Senate investigation into the allegations led by Trump’s allies found no evidence of improper influence or wrongdoing by the former vice-president, concluding only that Hunter Biden had leveraged his family name to secure lucrative business deals.In the final weeks of the campaign, Giuliani claimed a laptop recovered from a repair shop in Delaware and belonged to Hunter Biden documented his foreign business dealings. With Giuliani as a conduit, the allegations were published by the New York Post to buttress the baseless claim that Biden shaped American foreign policy in Ukraine to benefit his son. The Biden campaign categorically denied the story and many of the key details were disputed.On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that, according to a person familiar with the matter, the tax investigation into Hunter Biden concerned some of his Chinese business dealings, among other financial transactions, and “does not have anything to do with the laptop”; the Guardian has not confirmed this.The disclosure about the investigation comes as Joe Biden is assembling his cabinet in advance of his inauguration, which will take place on 20 January despite Trump’s refusal to concede the election. Biden has yet to announce his pick for attorney general, a role that could have oversight of the investigation into his son’s taxes.The US attorney’s office in Delaware is led by David Weiss, who was appointed by Trump and sworn into the position in February 2018. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Delaware declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.Though Hunter Biden’s businesses dealings and his years-long struggle with addiction provided ample political ammunition for Trump, Joe Biden continued to defend him publicly. Hunter Biden is the president-elect’s only living son, after the death of his eldest child, Beau Biden, of brain cancer in 2015.The Biden-Harris transition team said in a separate statement: “President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.” More

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    David Dinkins obituary

    David Dinkins, the first black mayor of New York City, who has died aged 93, was in many ways the right man at the wrong time. His single term as mayor of the city he called “a gorgeous mosaic”, from 1990 until 1993, was a period of chaos for New York, consumed by a then-huge deficit of $1.8bn, the flight of business and money, a soaring murder rate and the seeming constant provocation of racial and ethnic conflict. Dinkins’ political personality was that of a conciliator, cautious and dignified, which contrasted starkly with his predecessor, Ed Koch, and indeed his successor, Rudy Giuliani, both of whom were as aggressive, abrasive and assertive as the population they represented.This image had been Dinkins’ selling point in 1989 to New York’s Democratic party. But during his mayoralty, as New York’s melting pot became a crucible, Dinkins was unable to make the sort of crucial gesture that might have calmed the city, like John Lindsay’s walk through Harlem in 1968 after Martin Luther King’s assassination sparked riots in other cities.Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey, where his father, William, was a barber. When his parents divorced, David moved to Harlem with his mother, Sally (nee Lucy), a domestic worker. Eventually he and his sister, Joyce, returned to Trenton, where he attended high school, and discovered segregation, which he had not experienced in New York – the school’s swimming pool was not open to black people.After graduation he wanted to join the Marine Corps, but found the “negro quota” filled. He entered the army and managed to transfer to the Marines, becoming one of the “Montford Point” recruits who integrated the corps. Discharged in 1946, he entered Howard University in Washington, one of the elite traditionally black colleges, where he graduated with an honours degree in mathematics. When his college sweetheart, Joyce Burrows, graduated in 1953, they married and moved to New York. Dinkins attended law school at Brooklyn College, getting his degree in 1956. In the meantime, he worked in a liquor store for his father-in-law, Daniel, a property magnate in Harlem and a powerful figure within Tammany Hall, the Democratic power structure in the city.While Dinkins was opening a private law practice, his father-in-law introduced him to the Carver Democratic Club, run by J Raymond Jones, “The Harlem Fox”, under whose mentorship Dinkins became one of the so-called “Gang of Four”, the group of rising young black politicians that also included the future US congressman Charles Rangel, the Manhattan borough president Percy Sutton and deputy mayor (under Koch) Basil Patterson.In 1965 Dinkins was elected to the state assembly, but in the face of redistricting, he did not run for a second term. Instead, he worked his way up through administrative positions. In 1973, he became the first black president of the city’s Board of Elections, and was credited with widening the voter base. The mayor, Abe Beame, nominated him as a deputy, which led to the revelation that Dinkins had failed to file tax returns for four years. This “oversight” was rectified, but it scuppered his nomination. In 1975 Beame appointed him city clerk, an influential position he held until 1985, when he won, on his third attempt, election as Manhattan’s borough president.Koch had originally been elected mayor in 1978, after running as a reformer against Tammany Hall, but in 1989 he was seeking an unprecedented fourth term following mammoth corruption scandals, and had also angered New York’s black community with his opposition to Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. That April the city was rocked by an attack on a white female jogger in Central Park, which led to the arrest of five black and Hispanic youths (13 years later their convictions were overturned when the real rapist confessed). Shortly before the primary in August that would decide the Democratic candidate, Yusuf Hawkins, a black 16-year-old, was shot dead by a gang of white youths who attacked him in their Brooklyn neighbourhood of Bensonhurst.In the face of massive racial tension, Dinkins was seen as a voice of reason, and he easily won the primary over Koch. In the election he faced Giuliani, whose reputation as a mafia-busting US attorney led him to adopt a strong law-and-order platform. Although Democrats held an almost five to one advantage in voter registrations, Giuliani added the endorsement of New York’s Liberal party, which helped him win more than half of Koch’s voters. Dinkins was elected by a margin of only 46,000 votes, 51% to 48%, and New York became the last of America’s 10 largest cities to elect a black mayor. In his inaugural address, he spoke of “a new coalition of conscience and purpose”.Taking office in the middle of a recession, with 357,000 private jobs gone and federal aid cut, Dinkins had a difficult time keeping campaign promises in the face of a tightening budget, and was forced to raise city taxes. He moved to improve public housing, and to keep libraries open while cutting other programmes. He did a deal with the Disney corporation to help clean up Times Square, and another to keep the US Open Tennis in Queens. With a murder rate approaching 2,000 per year, he appointed a black police commissioner, Lee Brown, who came in from Atlanta and Houston with a reputation as a reformer. But while Dinkins waited for Brown to report, the city again exploded.In August 1990, a tourist attending the US Open Tennis was stabbed to death on a subway platform. Dinkins announced a massive increase in the number of uniformed police. A few months later, the city was split by a black boycott of Korean-owned grocery stores, when a Korean-American owner accused a Haitian-American customer of shoplifting.Finally, in August 1991, the keg burst as a driver in a motorcade taking the head of a Lubavitcher Orthodox Jewish sect through Crown Heights in Brooklyn swerved on to a sidewalk and killed a seven-year-old black boy, Gavin Cato. Hours later, a group of black youths killed an Australian rabbinical student. The two killings prompted almost five days of rioting, with black citizens protesting over the boy’s death and Jewish groups claiming the police were failing to protect them.Although an independent investigation in 1993 cleared Dinkins against charges of withholding police aid, it did criticise his relative lack of action. By then it was too late to heal the wounds. Giuliani turned the tables on him and took a larger percentage of the white vote and he won his rematch in the mayoralty race that November.In 1998 Giuliani and the city settled a lawsuit against the city by Jewish organisations, with the mayor calling Dinkins’ response “inadequate”. Dinkins invited Giuliani to dinner, saying: “I extend my hand to him in brotherhood,” but Giuliani declined this Obama-like gesture. In his 2013 memoir, A Mayor’s Life: Governing New York’s Gorgeous Mosaic (written with Peter Knobler), Dinkins called Giuliani a “cold, unkind person who practised the politics of boundless ambition”.After leaving office, Dinkins was a professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and hosted a radio talk show. A keen tennis player, he served on the board of the US Tennis Association. He remained active in politics, and in 2013 supported his former aide Bill de Blasio in his successful campaign for election as mayor.Dinkins’ wife died in October. He is survived by his son, David, and daughter, Donna.• David Norman Dinkins, politician, born 10 July 1927; died 23 November 2020 More