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      Rudy Giuliani should be disbarred over 2020 election, DC panel recommends

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      Rudy Giuliani’s law license should be revoked over his work on a failed lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results on behalf of then president Donald Trump, a Washington DC attorney ethics committee has recommended.He now faces being disbarred in the capital after the review panel late on Friday condemned the lawyer and ex-politician for aggressively pursuing the false assertions Trump made about his defeat by Democratic rival and now US president Joe Biden.Giuliani “claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence”, wrote the three-member panel in a report that details the errors and unsupported claims the former mayor of New York City made in a Pennsylvania lawsuit seeking to overturn the election result.Between the November 2020 election day and the January 6 insurrection by supporters of Trump at the US Capitol, Giuliani and other Trump lawyers repeatedly pressed claims of election fraud that were untrue and almost uniformly rejected by federal and state courts.He is the third lawyer who could lose his ability to practice law over what he did for Trump: John Eastman faces disbarment in California, and Lin Wood this week surrendered his license in Georgia.“Mr Giuliani’s effort to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election has helped destabilize our democracy,” wrote the panel members, Robert Bernius, Carolyn Haynesworth-Murrell and Jay Brozost.“The misconduct here sadly transcends all his past accomplishments,” they wrote. “It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect. He sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in his refusal to acknowledge the wrong he has done.”Giuliani has already had his New York law license suspended for false statements he made after the election. The Washington review panel’s work will now go to the DC court of appeals for a final decision.Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, called for support from Washington lawyers and criticized the panel’s work as “the sort of behavior we’d expect out of the Soviet Union”.Giuliani ran a short and disastrous campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2008 election.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting. More

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      Two Georgia election workers cleared of wrongdoing in 2020 elections

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      Two Atlanta election workers who were the subject of an outlandish conspiracy theory amplified by Donald Trump were formally cleared of all wrongdoing by the Georgia state election board this week.Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss were at the center of one of the most persistent lies spread by Donald Trump and allies after the 2020 election. Using selectively edited video footage, Trump and Rudy Giuliani claimed that Freeman and Moss removed ballots from suitcases underneath tables after counting had ended on election night and counted them. Georgia election officials immediately debunked the claim, saying security footage showed that counting had not ended for the evening when Freeman and Moss removed the ballots from secure ballot transport boxes.A 10-page report released on Tuesday affirms that conclusion and offers one of the most thorough debunking of the claim to date. It officially marked the closure of the state election board’s investigation into the matter.“All allegations made against Freeman and Moss were unsubstantiated and found to have no merit,” the report says.Investigators with the FBI, Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI), and secretary of state’s office interviewed election officials, Republican poll watchers, as well as Freeman and Moss to reach that conclusion. Workers had begun packing up around 10.30pm and planned to resume scanning ballots the next day, but were subsequently told by Richard Barron, then the director of elections in Fulton county, that they needed to keep counting until complete or the state advised them to stop. Ballots that were stored in secure ballot containers underneath tables were then taken out to continue counting.Republican poll watchers were never told that counting was over and that they needed to leave State Farm Arena, the report says. Instead, they left around 10.30pm when they were under the impression that counting was ending, telling investigators they had heard an election employee telling workers they were done for the night.Investigators also examined a social media post purporting to be from Freeman in which she confessed to election fraud. They found that the Instagram account was created by someone else who was impersonating Freeman. The report does not reveal who created the account.“This serves as further evidence that Ms Freeman and Ms Moss – while doing their patriotic duty and serving their community – were simply collateral damage in a coordinated effort to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election,” Von DuBose, a lawyer representing both women, said in a statement.Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, who drew Trump’s ire for defending the election results in Georgia, praised the report.“We remain diligent and dedicated to looking into real claims of voter fraud,” he said in a statement. “We are glad the state election board finally put this issue to rest. False claims and knowingly false allegations made against these election workers have done tremendous harm. Election workers deserve our praise for being on the frontlines.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFreeman and Moss both faced vicious harassment because of the claims. They received death threats and Freeman, who is in her 60s, fled her home. Moss would only leave her home for work because she was so scared, she told Reuters in 2021. Her son, a teenager, also faced harassment and began failing in school.Both women testified to the US House committee investigating the January 6 attacks about the horror of the harassment.“I won’t even introduce myself by my name any more. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about people listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me,” Freeman said. “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”Joe Biden awarded both women the presidential citizens medal on January 6 this year.“Both of them were just doing their jobs until they were targeted and threatened by the same predators and peddlers of lies that would fuel the insurrection. They were literally forced from their homes, facing despicable racist taunts,” he said at the ceremony. “Despite it all, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss found the courage to testify openly and honestly to the whole country and the world about their experience to set the record straight about the lies and defend the integrity of our elections.” More

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      Man sues Giuliani over false arrest after ‘pat’ on back led to assault charge

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      A heckler who was charged with assaulting Rudy Giuliani at a Staten Island grocery store last year – after slapping him on the back and saying, “What’s up, scumbag?” – filed suit against the former New York City mayor and prominent Trump ally on Wednesday, alleging he levied an empty accusation.The lawsuit filed by Daniel Gill in Manhattan federal court also names as defendants the city and several police officers.It says the defendants “participated in an unlawful conspiracy … to deprive [Gill] of his right to liberty, to his right to speak freely without retribution, and to be free from unreasonable seizures, in violation of his rights under the first, fourth and 14th amendments to the constitution of the United States”.Filed by the prominent civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, the civil action seeks monetary damages “for false arrest, civil rights conspiracy resulting in false arrest and false imprisonment, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress”.The Guardian contacted a Giuliani attorney for comment.On 26 June 2022, Giuliani was campaigning with his son, Andrew Giuliani, a candidate for governor of New York – in what the suit calls a “vanity run” – when Gill, a grocery store employee, walked past and clapped the former mayor on the back, saying: “What’s up, scumbag?”Giuliani, then 78, accused Gill of hitting him – and said the feeling was like being shot or struck with a boulder.In the words of Gill’s lawsuit, “video footage captured the entire encounter. One person called 911 and [officers] arrived on the scene, followed by other NYPD officers.”Gill was arrested and spent 21 hours in jail before being arraigned on misdemeanor charges including third-degree assault.Police on the scene and Giuliani, the suit alleges, “agreed to deprive plaintiff of his liberty”. The suit charges that Gill was “put through the system” at Giuliani’s urging.“They did so despite the fact that the police defendants, and other members of the NYPD, all stated they should watch the video before taking any action,” the suit contends.Gill, the suit says, “explained that he ‘tapped’ … Giuliani to get his attention; a version of events completely corroborated by the video”.The suit also contends that Giuliani welcomed physical contact at the campaign event on Staten Island which, Kuby and co-counsel Rhiya Trivedi argue, is among the last outposts of dogged Trump support in New York City.“The area is a bastion of white conservatism and Trump support,” the suit says. “It is one of the vanishingly small venues in New York where the fabulist, election-denying, disbarred attorney and late-night-talk-show-punchline former mayor Rudolph Giuliani could expect to find a mostly affectionate audience.”At the grocery store, the suit says: “Giuliani mingled with the shoppers, who variously shook his hand, patted him on the back and shoulders, tapped him on the arm, and generally told him what a great guy he was.“Indeed, a woman is shown in the video affectionately patting and rubbing Giuliani’s back, demonstrating at least that minor physical contact was welcome at the event.“Not everyone present … was thrilled at Giuliani’s appearance … Gill worked at the ShopRite and had done so for many years, in contrast to Giuliani who has not held an actual job in over a decade.“[Gill] took a break from his work, walked up to … Giuliani, patted or tapped him on the back, said ‘What’s up, scumbag?’ and walked away.“That was the entire encounter between the two men.”After Gill’s arrest, amid widespread outcry, the Legal Aid Society, which provides public defenders, said: “The charges facing Daniel Gill, who has no previous contact with the criminal legal system, are inconsistent with existing law.“Our client merely patted Mr Giuliani, who sustained nothing remotely resembling physical injuries, without malice, to simply get his attention, as the video footage clearly showed.“Mr Gill was then followed and threatened by one of Mr Giuliani’s associates who allegedly poked Mr Gill in the chest and told him that he was going to be ‘locked up’. He was then needlessly held by [New York police] in custody for over 24 hours.“Given Mr Giuliani’s obsession with seeing his name in the press and his demonstrated propensity to distort the truth, we are happy to correct the record on exactly what occurred over the weekend on Staten Island.”The current New York mayor, Eric Adams, also questioned Giuliani’s account of the event.“Someone needs to remind former mayor Giuliani that falsely reporting a crime is a crime,” Adams told reporters. “When you look at the video, the guy basically walked by and patted him on the back. It was clear that [Giuliani] was not punched in the head. It was clear that it didn’t feel like a bullet. It was clear that he wasn’t about to fall to the ground.”The charges were dismissed. Shortly after that, Gill filed a civil claim against the city, alleging false arrest.His lawsuit against Giuliani comes at a time of growing legal woes for the former mayor.On Monday, a former associate filed suit against Giuliani, seeking $10m and alleging “abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and other misconduct” including “alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist and antisemitic remarks”.Noelle Dunphy alleges that Giuliani “often demanded oral sex while he took phone calls on speaker phone from high-profile friends and clients, including then-President Trump”.She also alleges Giuliani asked “if she knew anyone in need of a pardon”, as “he was selling pardons for $2m, which he and President Trump would split”.Dunphy also claims Giuliani directed her to refer pardon-seekers to him, eschewing the “normal channels” of the justice department.Giuliani also faces possible indictment over his leading role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. 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      The fall of Rudy Giuliani, once the toast of New York, continues unabated | Lloyd Green

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      From “America’s mayor” to a human punchline, Rudy Giuliani’s descent continues unabated. On Monday, news broke of the septuagenarian Giuliani being slammed with a $10m sexual harassment and unpaid wages lawsuit brought by Noelle Dunphy, 43, a former aide. The mighty have fallen.Once he was the toast of town. As a federal prosecutor he sent a congressman to jail, locked up mobsters and indicted white-collar criminals. As mayor, he made the streets again feel safe. Love him or hate him, crime precipitously dropped on his watch.In the days and months following 9/11, he projected strength, confidence and reassurance. He had braced himself for a calamity; he just didn’t know its source or when it would happen. He was steady when crunchtime arrived.As mayor, his tenure was consequential. His eight years at city hall rank up there with Fiorello La Guardia, Michael Bloomberg and Ed Koch. All that feels like aeons ago.These days, Giuliani and the words “defendant” and “buffoon” stand adjacent. He remains under criminal investigation by a Georgia prosecutor. Beyond that, he is a defendant in at least three separate pending election-related defamation lawsuits.His life is tumultuous. He is plagued by an image problem. His appearance in Borat 2 will forever haunt him.Watching him shove his hands down his pants was pathetic and pitiable. His awkwardness and desperation remain indelible.But it doesn’t end there. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s defeat at the hands of Joe Biden, hair dye running down Rudy’s face became another unforgettable scene in American political lore.It presaged what followed. In that moment, you knew that Rudy had gone off the rails, worse that he possessed no limits when it came to Trump.Yet Giuliani’s latest woes cannot be described as wholly surprising. He always possessed a penchant for drama and a tropism for the transgressive. He loved the opera and his life emerged as operatic. As a prosecutor, he dressed up “undercover”. Then as mayor, he performed onstage in drag with Trump.All that came with a darker side. The warning signs were there. We just chose to ignore them.Amid his first campaign for mayor, in 1989, a story broke of a concentration camp survivor, Simon Berger, being held in federal custody, facing a blackboard that read “Arbeit Macht Frei”, the slogan written across the gates of Auschwitz. Berger would be acquitted. Decades later, Dunphy alleged that Giuliani has a problem with Jews.Fast forward to May 2000. Giuliani publicly announced that he was leaving Donna Hanover, his second wife. No one was more shocked than Hanover. Rudy had shredded the boundary between public and private.A year later, Rudy attempted to stretch out his term as mayor beyond its legal limits. Then again, his mother was a fan of Mussolini and his father spent time for armed robbery at Sing Sing, a prison located in upstate New York.Rudy also sought to make Bernie Kerik, his police commissioner, head of US homeland security. That went badly. Kerik eventually wound up in prison and George W Bush was left to do clean-up on aisle seven.During the 2016-17 presidential transition, rumours swirled of Giuliani coveting an appointment as secretary of state. That moment never arrived.There were “whispers from the staff ‘about his health and stability’,” Michael Wolff wrote in Fire and Fury, his 2018 blockbuster.To be sure, they were the same whispers echoed at a pre-inaugural lunch held at a Manhattan steakhouse by veterans of Giuliani’s time at city hall, and those with significant ties to the Trump administration.For the record, Dunphy’s pleadings are replete with references to Giuliani and alcohol.Giuliani and Ukraine made headlines, too. He and his buddies played Inspector Clouseau. In the end, Giuliani avoided prosecution, but Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas were convicted on federal charges.The political dexterity and judgment that Giuliani once demonstrated has vanished. He is conscious of the decline. “I don’t care about my legacy,” he adds. “I’ll be dead.”Nearly three years after the 2020 election, Trump refuses to concede and remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. “Giuliani, on the other hand, [is] finished in every conceivable way,” wrote Giuliani biographer Andrew Kirtzman.Along the way, Rudy’s future grows bleaker and more mirthless. More

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      Dominion is not done fighting 2020 election lies. A look at its other cases

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      When Dominion settled its closely-watched $787.5m defamation lawsuit against Fox last month, its lawyers made it clear that the company would continue to pursue legal action against those who spread false claims about the company and the 2020 election.The company still has major defamation cases pending against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Patrick Byrne and Mike Lindell – all allies of Donald Trump who were some of the most prominent figures that spread election lies involving the voting machine company on television and elsewhere after the 2020 election.“Money is accountability and we got that today from Fox, but we’re not done yet. We’ve got some other people who have some accountability coming towards them,” Stephen Shackelford, a lawyer who represented the company, said outside the courthouse after the settlement was reached.Dominion also has ongoing defamation lawsuits against Newsmax and One America News Network, conservative outlets that prominently promoted lies about the 2020 election. Smartmatic, another voting company, is also suing many of the same figures and has its own $2.7bn defamation suit against Fox and its own cases against many of the same defendants.In order to win, Dominion will have to clear the high bar of showing that those responsible for making the defamatory statement knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Dominion built an unusually strong case against Fox, producing reams of evidence showing that executives and top hosts knew the claims about the election were false. The strength of its Fox case doesn’t necessarily mean it will have an ironclad case against OAN and Newsmax, said Anthony Glassman, a defamation lawyer.“There is no way to know whether you’re likely to get as strong a sense of the internal operations of each company as you did from Fox. Each company most likely operates in very different ways which may provide them with different defenses and make it more of a challenge to win,” he said.The cases against the individuals are at once both more simple and potentially more challenging than the ones against the news networks. Dominion only needs to show the individuals disregarded the truth and made false statements. But it may be harder to produce a paper trail showing that they genuinely knew what they were saying was false or recklessly disregarded the truth.“The trove of high-profile damning evidence – that key folks at Fox knew the election wasn’t stolen and thought the Dominion statements were ‘crazy’ – becomes less relevant,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a first amendment scholar at the University of Utah. “Dominion needs evidence that Guilani and Powell themselves either knew it was false or recklessly disregarded its falsity. We haven’t yet gotten a full look at what it might have gathered on that front.”Evidence is already emerging suggesting that at least Giuliani and Powell knew that their statements were false. In the Fox case, Dominion obtained an email in which one of Powell’s sources, who had no expertise in election administration, falsely claimed Nancy Pelosi’s chief of staff and Diane Feinstein’s husband had an interest in Dominion and that the machines were flipping votes for Biden. The source claimed she had visions and said Antonin Scalia was murdered. She acknowledged some of what she had written was “wackadoodle”, but Powell passed it on to Fox host Maria Bartiromo, who asked Powell about similar claims on her show shortly thereafter.Abby Grossberg, a former Fox employee suing the network, also released a recording she made of Giuliani on 8 November 2020 in which he admits he doesn’t yet have evidence to support some of the outlandish claims he’s making about Dominion.Here’s a look at where Dominion’s cases stand:Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike LindellDominion separately filed suit against Giuliani, Powell and Lindell in federal district court in Washington DC. Giuliani and Powell represented Trump in court after the election, filing numerous lawsuits based on easily disprovable claims of fraud. Lindell is the CEO of MyPillow – the company is also named as a defendant in the suit – and a Trump ally who became one of the most prominent funders of efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The company is seeking more than $1.3bn in damages from each. It is also seeking a court order against Powell and Lindell forcing them to remove any statements ultimately proven to be false and defamatory and blocking them from making any further false statements about Dominion.In August, US district judge Carl Nichols, a Donald Trump appointee, declined to dismiss the case against all three.Discovery in the case is ongoing (Lindell has tried to avoid complying with it) and will be completed in September. Nichols has set a February conference, to set a trial date, which could come as soon as the middle of next year.Patrick ByrneDominion is suing the former Overstock.com CEO, one of the biggest funders and propagators of election misinformation, for defamation in federal court in Washington DC. The company is seeking $1.6bn in damages as well as $1.3m in other expenses related to Byrne’s false claims about the election.The complaint, filed in August 2021, specifically cites Byrne’s efforts to produce a report analyzing data in Antrim county, Michigan, that falsely claimed Dominion machines were flipping votes. The document became a key source for those who made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Byrne was also a key funder of a widely-criticized review of votes in Maricopa county, Arizona, that further sowed doubt about Dominion equipment, but ultimately affirmed Biden’s victory there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“After the election, Byrne manufactured and promoted fake evidence to convince the world that the 2020 election had been stolen as part of a massive international conspiracy among China, Venezuelan and Spanish companies, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), prominent Republicans, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Dominion, which, Byrne falsely claimed, committed fraud and helped steal the 2020 presidential election,” the complaint says.Nichols allowed the case to go forward last year.Discovery is scheduled to be completed later this year. A trial date has not yet been set, but could take place as soon as the middle of next year.NewsmaxDominion is suing Newsmax in Delaware superior court for broadcasting false claims about the company after the 2020 election that are similar to the ones Fox broadcast. The case is being overseen by Eric Davis, the same judge who oversaw the company’s case against Fox. Dominion is seeking $1.6bn in damages, plus an additional $1.3m it says it had to spend on security and combating the false claims put out about the company.“Newsmax made the intentional and knowing choice to depict – and then publicize, endorse and fuel – the lies about Dominion as truth, creating and promoting an alternate reality that duped millions of Americans into believing that Dominion stole the 2020 election from President Trump,” the complaint, filed in August 2021, says. “It repeatedly broadcast the lies of facially unreliable sources – lies which Newsmax itself adopted, endorsed, promoted and manufactured. And it acted this way because the lies attracted Trump’s public stamp of approval, attention and admiration, along with huge ratings boosts and profit windfalls.”Davis declined to dismiss the case last year. “The complaint supports the reasonable inference that Newsmax either knew its statements about Dominion’s role in the election fraud were false or had a high degree of awareness that they were false,” he wrote in June.In 2021, Newsmax apologized to Eric Coomer, a Dominion employee, who it falsely said had rigged votesDiscovery in the case is ongoing.One America News NetworkDominion sued OANN in federal court in Washington, alleging that the company embraced and broadcast outlandish claims about the company in an effort to position itself as an alternative to Fox.“Spurred by a quest for profits and viewers, OAN – a competitor to media giant Fox – engaged in a race to the bottom with Fox and other outlets such as Newsmax to spread false and manufactured stories about election fraud,” Dominion lawyers wrote in their complaint, filed in August of 2021.“Dominion quickly became the focus of this downward spiral of lies, as each broadcaster attempted to outdo the others by making the lies more outrageous, spreading them further and endorsing them as strongly as possible.”Nichols, who is also overseeing the case, declined to dismiss the case last November. Discovery is ongoing. A trial date has not yet been set, but it could take place some time next year. More

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      Guiliani admits using ‘dirty trick’ to suppress Hispanic vote in mayoral race

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      Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has admitted to a “dirty trick” that his campaign used to suppress the Hispanic vote during the city’s 1993 mayoral race.On Tuesday, Giuliani revealed his voter suppression tactics to the far-right Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon and Arizona’s defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake during a discussion on his America’s Mayor Live program.In the conversation, Giuliani – who was central to Trump’s efforts to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election – lamented that he had been “cheated” during the 1989 mayoral race in which he lost before explaining his 1993 campaign strategy, saying: “I’ll tell you one little dirty trick,” to which Lake replied: “We need dirty tricks!”“A dirty trick in New York City? I’m so shocked,” Bannon sarcastically responded. Giuliani then interrupted the former Trump adviser, saying: “No, played by Republicans!”“Republicans don’t do dirty tricks,” Bannon said before Giuliani enthusiastically said: “How about this one?” Bannon replied: “Okay give it to me.”Giuliani explained that he spent $2m to set up a so-called Voter Integrity Committee which was headed by Randy Levine, current president of the New York Yankees baseball team, and John Sweeney, a former New York Republican congressman.“So they went through East Harlem, which is all Hispanic, and they gave out little cards, and the card said: ‘If you come to vote, make sure you have your green card because INS are picking up illegals.’ So they spread it all over the Hispanic …” said Giuliani, referring to the now defunct US Immigration and Naturalization Service before trailing off.“Oh my gosh,” Lake replied as she raised her eyebrows.Following its closure in 2003, the INS transferred its immigration enforcement functions to other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Giuliani went on to reveal that following the election, which he won against then incumbent mayor David Dinkins by around 53,000 votes, then president Bill Clinton’s justice department launched an investigation into him.“[Then-attorney general] Janet Reno is coming after us, we violated civil rights,” Giuliani recalled his lawyer Dennison Young telling him. Giuliani then reassured Young, saying: “What civil rights did we violate? They don’t have civil rights! All we did was prevent people who can’t vote from voting. Maybe we tricked them, but tricking is not a crime.”“In those days, we didn’t have crazy prosecutors. Nowadays, they’ll probably prosecute you for it … and that’s the way we kept down the Hispanic vote,” Giuliani said.“Not the legal vote, the illegal vote,” Lake interjected.“Of course! The Hispanic illegal vote, which takes away the Hispanic legal vote,” Giuliani responded.The Huffington Post compiled a handful of media reports from the time which collectively point towards Giuliani’s voter suppression tactics during the election.A 1993 New York Times article published at the time of the election reported that Dinkins had called for a news conference to “accuse the Giuliani camp of waging ‘an outrageous campaign of voter intimidation and dirty tricks’”.One of the charges included English and Spanish pro-Dinkins posters that were allegedly put up at the time in Washington Heights and the Bronx, predominantly Hispanic and Black areas. “The posters suggested that illegal immigrants would be arrested at the polls and deported if they tried to vote,” the New York Times reported.An article published in the socialist journal Against the Current months after the election also mentioned the posters.“Cops put up phony Dinkins posters in mostly Dominican Washington Heights, saying the INS would be checking voters’ documents at the polls. In some cases police themselves asked Latino voters for their passports,” wrote labor and social activist Andy Pollack.Similarly, a Washington Post report published days after the election cited complaints surrounding voter suppression in the city.“Among the complaints are the placing of signs on telephone poles and walls in Latino areas warning that ‘federal authorities and immigration officials will be at all election sites … Immigration officials will be at locations to arrest and deport undocumented illegal voters,’” the Post reported.A statement issued by the then justice department on 2 November 1993 said: “The Department of Justice is aware that posters have been placed throughout New York City misinforming voters about the role of federal officials in today’s elections … Federal observers are in New York to protect the rights of minority voters. They are not there to enforce immigration laws.”Speaking to the Huffington Post, Sweeney dismissed Giuliani’s claims as “nonsense” and said that he ran a “legitimate” operation alongside Levine. Levine echoed similar sentiments to the outlet, explaining that the purpose of the operation was “getting poll watchers and attorneys when there was a dispute”.He added that he had “no knowledge” of the trick Giuliani described.Since the 1993 mayoral elections, voter suppression tactics have continued to be carried out in various ways across the city.In December 2021, the New York City council approved a bill that would have allowed for non-US citizens to vote in local elections. However, the law was struck down months later in June 2022 after state supreme court judge Ralph Porzio of Staten Island ruled the law “unconstitutional”.The same month Porzio struck down the law, the Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act into law, which seeks to prevent local officials from enacting rules that may suppress voting rights of individuals as a result of their race.In addition to local governments or school districts with track records of discrimination now being required to obtain state approval before passing certain voting policies, the new law expands language assistance to voters for whom English is not a first language, as well as provides legal tools to fight racist voting provisions.“We’re going to change our election laws so we no longer hurt minority communities,” Hochul said as she signed the bill into law. More

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      Why Dominion is already the winner of the $1.6bn lawsuit against Fox News

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      As Fox News continued to broadcast lies about Dominion voting systems and the 2020 election, Tucker Carlson, one of its star hosts used one word over and over to describe what the network was doing – “reckless”.Those messages were the first pieces of evidence Justin Nelson, a lawyer representing Dominion, displayed on Tuesday as he began his argument for why a judge should rule the network defamed his client. “Reckless was a meaningful word” – in order to win the case, Nelson has to prove that Fox acted with “actual malice” – that its hosts, producers, and executives knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard to the truth.“Unlike every other single defamation case, we have in their own words the fact that they knew it was false,” Nelson said.It was an example that illustrated how the core of Dominion’s $1.6bn case against Fox are the words that came from the mouths of Fox’s employees. Regardless of what happens in the case going forward, Dominion may have already won: the messages offer a significant historical record of how top officials at one of America’s most powerful media organization aired information they knew was false when American democracy was under attack.The case has received an extraordinary amount of public attention and represents one of the most aggressive efforts to hold a party accountable for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.There was the Fox employee who reviewed a script for Jeanine Pirro’s show and wrote that it was “rife with conspiracies”. There was the internal fact-checking operation, the Brain Room, which debunked the claims about Dominion and circulated it to Fox employees. There was another Fox employee who joked he was so familiar with fact-checked emails he received from Dominion that he had them “tattooed” on his body. There was the Fox employee who noted that any time Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell came on the network it was “guaranteed gold”, even as the network knew the claims they were pushing were false.Fox’s defamation defenses, while potentially legally potent, will not wipe out what has already been revealed. Erin Murphy, a lawyer representing the network, said in court this week that Fox can’t be held liable because it was merely airing allegations from representatives of the sitting president. Any reasonable viewer, she said, would have understood that they were allegations. Even if top Fox executives were generally aware of what was being broadcast and didn’t believe it, Murphy argued, that’s not enough to hold them liable. Eric Davis, the Delaware judge seemed skeptical of some those arguments.Tucker Carlson’s messages, Murphy pressed on, aren’t really relevant to whether other Fox officials knowingly broadcast false information.A jury will ultimately decide on the liability issues, but seeing one of the network’s most visible stars forcefully disagreeing with what was going on on-air will likely be what endures in the mind of the American public.Undergirding the litigation is also a dueling vision about the power of Fox and the role that it plays in American media. As Murphy, Fox’s lawyer, told it, Fox is just another news network where conservative opinions are sometimes sprinkled in on air. Its decision to air the allegations about Dominion were merely an attempt to help its viewers understand, she said, once comparing their work to C-Span, which strictly airs political proceedings with no commentary or narrative.But Dominion’s lawyers painted a more realistic picture of Fox, emphasizing the immense influence it has among conservatives. When the network chose to air the false claims about Dominion, it wasn’t just airing allegations, the lawyers said, it was pumping it into the veins of the American public. Fox didn’t just give Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani airtime, the network made them household names.There was a “deliberate decision … to release the kraken,” Rodney Smolla, another Dominion lawyer said on Tuesday, referring to Powell.Stephen Shackleford, another Dominion lawyer, made a similar point in his argument on Wednesday. He noted that when Powell began appearing on Fox, she hadn’t been formally hired by Trump and was being shut out of meetings at the White House. Fox still chose to give her a platform.“Sidney was hunting for someone to make her relevant and Fox made her relevant,” said Stephen Shackleford, another lawyer representing Dominion. “While it doesn’t matter legally, the historical record needs to be clear.”The full trial in the case is scheduled to begin on 17 April. More

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      Fox News braces for more turbulence as second defamation lawsuit advances

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      Fox News braces for more turbulence as second defamation lawsuit advancesNew York court greenlights $2.7bn suit against news channel by election company Smartmatic over 2020 presidential election liesAs Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation battles to contain the Dominion lawsuit scandal that has engulfed its top executives and stars, another crisis is building in the wings that has the potential to cause further turbulence for the media empire.‘Lachlan’s in the mire’: Fox News case spells trouble for Murdoch heirRead moreSmartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox News has attracted only a fraction of the attention garnered by the legal action of Dominion Voting Systems. Yet both firms are suing Fox for defamation related to its coverage of Donald Trump’s stolen-election lie, and both pose a serious threat to Fox’s finances and reputation.In fact, on paper Smartmatic’s suit appears to be the more dangerous. It’s demanding damages of $2.7bn, compared with Dominion’s $1.6bn.So far, attempts by Fox lawyers to have the Smartmatic case dismissed have fallen on stony ground. Last week the New York state supreme court in Manhattan gave the green light for the case to proceed against Fox News, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, the former business anchor Lou Dobbs and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.Smartmatic, a global election technology company headquartered in London, lodged its defamation suit in February 2021. “The Earth is round,” was the complaint’s striking opening sentence. “Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election … ”The complaint goes on to argue that, contrary to these indisputable facts, Fox News broadcast a series of blatant lies in support of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theory. “Defendants did not want Biden to win the election. They wanted President Trump to win re-election … They also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story.”To prop up that story, the lawsuit claims, Fox needed a villain. That villain was Smartmatic.Smartmatic claims that more than 100 false statements were broadcast by Fox News hosts and guests. Smartmatic was falsely said to have been involved in 2020 election counts in six battleground states – in fact, it was present only at the count in Los Angeles county.Fox broadcast that Smartmatic shared its technology with Dominion, when in fact the two companies had no communication and regarded each other as rivals. Smartmatic was in cahoots with foreign governments in a conspiracy to rig the vote for Biden, Giuliani said on Bartiromo’s show – a claim that the company disputes as false and defamatory.Fox also described Smartmatic as having been founded in Venezuela at the behest of corrupt dictators. In fact, it was founded by Antonio Mugica and Roger Piñate in 2000 in Boca Raton, Florida, in the wake of the “hanging chad” fiasco, with the aim of using technology to restore people’s faith in election results.The business has since grown around the world. The firm claims that it has lost clients as a result of what it calls Fox’s “disinformation campaign”.Fox News has disputed Smartmatic’s multibillion estimate of its losses, calling it vastly inflated.A spokesperson for the broadcaster told the Guardian: “Freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs. There is nothing more newsworthy than covering the president of the US and his lawyers making allegations.”Smartmatic has a very high bar to meet if it is to win the defamation suit at trial. New York state law has a rigorous approach to the first amendment of the US constitution which preserves press freedom.Under it, plaintiffs have to be able to convince a jury that not only did the media outlet put out false information, it did so with “actual malice”. That means that it either knew it was peddling a lie and went ahead anyway, or showed a reckless disregard for the truth.“New York is pretty protective of media rights,” said Roy Gutterman, a media law professor at Syracuse University who was a consultant early on in the Smartmatic case advising a non-party entity. “Every year I read a lot of cases from New York, and it’s hard to be successful in this state.”Despite this tough challenge, so far the wind is in Smartmatic’s sails. David Cohen, the New York supreme court justice presiding over the litigation, has indicated that the company has a strong enough case to go to trial.In last week’s ruling, Cohen found that “at a minimum, Fox News turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims” about Smartmatic. “Plaintiffs have pleaded facts sufficient to allow a jury to infer that Fox News acted with actual malice.”TopicsFox NewsUS elections 2020News CorporationRudy GiulianiMedia businessTV newsnewsReuse this content More