Voter Fraud (Election Fraud)

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      Lawsuits Take the Lead in Fight Against Disinformation

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLawsuits Take the Lead in Fight Against DisinformationDefamation cases have made waves across an uneasy right-wing media landscape, from Fox to Newsmax.Lou Dobbs, whose show on Fox Business was canceled on Friday, was one of several Fox anchors named in a defamation suit filed by the election technology company Smartmatic.Credit…Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesFeb. 6, 2021, 5:05 p.m. ETIn just a few weeks, lawsuits and legal threats from a pair of obscure election technology companies have achieved what years of advertising boycotts, public pressure campaigns and liberal outrage could not: curbing the flow of misinformation in right-wing media.Fox Business canceled its highest rated show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” on Friday after its host was sued as part of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit. On Tuesday, the pro-Trump cable channel Newsmax cut off a guest’s rant about rigged voting machines. Fox News, which seldom bows to critics, has run fact-checking segments to debunk its own anchors’ false claims about electoral fraud.This is not the typical playbook for right-wing media, which prides itself on pugilism and delights in ignoring the liberals who have long complained about its content. But conservative outlets have rarely faced this level of direct assault on their economic lifeblood.Smartmatic, a voter technology firm swept up in conspiracies spread by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, filed its defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire on Thursday, citing Mr. Dobbs and two other Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, for harming its business and reputation.Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s chief executive.Credit…Henry Nicholls/ReutersDominion Voting Systems, another company that Mr. Trump has accused of rigging votes, filed defamation suits last month against two of the former president’s lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, on similar grounds. Both firms have signaled that more lawsuits may be imminent.Litigation represents a new front in the war against misinformation, a scourge that has reshaped American politics, deprived citizens of common facts and paved the way for the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Fox News, for instance, paid millions last year to settle a claim from the family of a murdered Democratic National Committee staff member falsely accused by Fox hosts of leaking emails to WikiLeaks.But the use of defamation suits has also raised uneasy questions about how to police a news media that counts on First Amendment protections — even as some conservative outlets advanced Mr. Trump’s lies and eroded public faith in the democratic process.“If you had asked me 15 years, five years ago, whether I would ever have gotten involved in a defamation case, I would have told you no,” said Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer who is representing Mr. Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, and the writer E. Jean Carroll in defamation suits against the former president.The defamation suits raise the question of how news organizations should present public figures. Sidney Powell was a conspiracist but she was also a member of President Donald J. Trump’s legal team.Credit…Jonathan Ernst/ReutersLike other prominent liberals in her profession, Ms. Kaplan had long considered defamation suits a way for the wealthy and powerful to try to silence their critics. Last year, Mr. Trump’s campaign sued multiple news organizations for coverage that the president deemed unfavorable or unfair. The technology billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s suit against the gossip blog Gawker that ultimately bankrupted the business.“What’s changed,” Ms. Kaplan said, “and we’ve all seen it happen before our eyes, is the fact that so many people out there, including people in positions of authority, are just willing to say anything, regardless of whether it has any relationship to the truth or not.”Some First Amendment lawyers say that an axiom — the best antidote to bad speech is more speech — may no longer apply in a media landscape where misinformation can flood public discourse via countless channels, from cable news to the Facebook pages of family and friends.“This shouldn’t be the way to govern speech in our country,” Ms. Kaplan said. “It’s not an efficient or productive way to promote truth-telling or quality journalistic standards through litigating in court. But I think it’s gotten to the point where the problem is so bad right now there’s virtually no other way to do it.”Mr. Trump’s rise is an inextricable part of this shift. His popularity boosted the profits and power of the right-wing commentators and media outlets that defended him. In November, when Mr. Trump cast doubt on the outcome of the presidential election despite no credible evidence, it made commercial and editorial sense for his media allies to follow his lead.The Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly refused to accept Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president-elect and was rewarded with a surge in ratings. Fox News was more cautious — the network declared Mr. Biden the next president on Nov. 7 — but some Fox stars, including Mr. Dobbs, Ms. Bartiromo and Ms. Pirro, offered significant airtime to his lawyers, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell, and others who pushed the outlandish election-fraud narrative.In one example cited in the 276-page complaint filed by Smartmatic, Mr. Dobbs’s program broadcast a false claim by Ms. Powell that Hugo Chávez, the former president of Venezuela, had been involved in creating the company’s technology and installed software so that votes could be switched undetected. (Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013, did not have anything to do with Smartmatic.)Smartmatic also cited an episode of “Lou Dobbs Tonight” in which Mr. Giuliani falsely described the election as “stolen” and claimed that hundreds of thousands of “unlawful ballots” had been found. Mr. Dobbs described the election as the end to “a four-and-a-half-year-long effort to overthrow the president of the United States,” and raised the specter of outside interference.“It has the feeling of a cover-up in certain places, you know — putting the servers in foreign countries, private companies,” Mr. Dobbs said.Fox has promised to fight the litigation. “We are proud of our 2020 election coverage and will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court,” the network said in a statement the day before it canceled Mr. Dobbs’s show.Executives in conservative media argue that the Smartmatic lawsuit raises uncomfortable questions about how news organizations should present public figures: Ms. Powell was a conspiracist, but she was also the president’s lawyer. Should a media outlet be allowed to broadcast her claims?“There’s a new standard created out of this that is very dangerous for all the cable channels,” Christopher Ruddy, the owner of Newsmax and a Trump confidant, said in an interview on Saturday. “You have to fact-check everything public figures say, and you could be held libelous for what they say.” Mr. Ruddy contends that Newsmax presented a fair view of the claims about election fraud and voting technology companies.Newsmax personnel, though, were made aware of the potential damage stemming from claims that appeared on their shows. In an extraordinary on-air moment on Tuesday, Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and a staunch Trump ally, began attacking Dominion — and was promptly cut off by a Newsmax anchor, Bob Sellers, who read a formal statement that Newsmax had accepted the election results “as legal and final.”Fox executives revealed their own concerns in December, after Smartmatic sent a letter signaling that litigation was imminent. Fox News and Fox Business ran an unusually stilted segment in which an election expert, Edward Perez, debunked conspiracy theories about voter fraud that had recently been aired on the networks. The segment ran on three programs — those hosted by Mr. Dobbs, Ms. Bartiromo and Ms. Pirro. (Newsmax, which also received a letter from Smartmatic, aired its own clarifications.)This fear of liability has rippled into smaller corners of the right-wing media sphere. Mr. Giuliani, who hosts a show on the New York radio station WABC, was caught by surprise on Thursday when his employer aired a disclaimer during his show that distanced itself and its advertisers from Mr. Giuliani’s views.“They got to warn you about me?” Mr. Giuliani asked his listeners, sounding incredulous. “Putting that on without telling me — not the right thing to do. Not the right thing to do at all.”Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School who studies disinformation and radicalization in American politics, said that the president’s lies about the election had pushed pro-Trump outlets beyond the relatively lax standards applied to on-air commentators.“The competitive dynamic in the right-wing outrage industry has forced them all over the rails,” Mr. Benkler said. “This is the first set of lawsuits that’s actually going to force them to internalize the cost of the damages they’re inflicting on democracy.”Mr. Benkler called the Smartmatic suit “a useful corrective” — “it’s a tap on the brakes” — but he also urged restraint. “We have to be very cautious in our celebration of these lawsuits, because the history of defamation is certainly one in which people in power try to slap down critics,” he said.Rudolph W. Giuliani was the public face of Mr. Trump’s effort to challenge the election results in the courts.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMartin Garbus, a veteran First Amendment lawyer, said he was personally repelled by the lies about the election propagated by Mr. Trump and his allies, but he also called the Smartmatic suit “very complicated.”“Will lawsuits like this also be used in the future to attack groups whose politics I might be more sympathetic with?” he asked.Mr. Garbus, who made his reputation in part by defending the speech rights of neo-Nazis and other hate groups, said that the growth of online sources for news and disinformation had made him question whether he might take on such cases today. He offered an example of a local neo-Nazi march.Before social media, “it wouldn’t have made much of an echo,” Mr. Garbus said. “Now, if they say it, it’s all over the media, and somebody in Australia could blow up a mosque based on what somebody in New York says.“It seems to me you have to reconsider the consequence of things,” he added.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Fox Business Cancels ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLou Dobbs’s Show Is Canceled by Fox BusinessMr. Dobbs, a loyal supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, was named in a $2.7 billion lawsuit filed on Thursday against the Fox Corporation and two other Fox anchors.Lou Dobbs had the top-rated show on Fox Business. It was canceled the day after he was one of three Fox anchors named in a lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election technology company.Credit…John Lamparski/Getty ImagesFeb. 5, 2021Updated 9:48 p.m. ETLou Dobbs, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal media supporters, abruptly lost his pulpit on Friday when Fox Business canceled his weekday television show, which had become a frequent clearinghouse for baseless theories of electoral fraud in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential race.Mr. Dobbs’s decade-long tenure at the network ended with little warning — a guest host filled in for his Friday slot — only a day after the election technology company Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and Fox News.The suit, which seeks damages of at least $2.7 billion, also named Mr. Dobbs as an individual defendant along with two other Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. Smartmatic specifically cited Mr. Dobbs’s program, which by late last year had become so packed with falsehoods about Mr. Trump’s defeat that Fox Business was forced to run a fact-checking segment debunking some of its own anchor’s assertions.Executives at Fox did not elaborate on Friday about why they had canceled Mr. Dobbs’s program, which was the top-rated show on Fox Business and drew a bigger audience than its competition on CNBC. The network said in a statement that it regularly reviewed its programming lineup.“Plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate postelection, including on Fox Business,” the network said. “This is part of those planned changes.”A person familiar with Fox’s decision said the network’s concerns about Mr. Dobbs predated this week’s filing of the Smartmatic lawsuit. But the person, who requested anonymity to describe private personnel matters, conceded that Mr. Dobbs’s extreme and unrepentant endorsements of Mr. Trump’s false election claims had imperiled his position, as did other moments. For instance, on the day of siege at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Dobbs described protesters as merely “walking between the rope lines.”The cancellation came as lawsuits and legal threats are rippling the landscape of media organizations popular with right-wing viewers. Dominion Voting Systems has sued two lawyers who represented Mr. Trump, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sydney Powell, over false claims they made on Fox News and other outlets that the company aided President Biden’s victory, and it is considering additional litigation.Mr. Dobbs, 75, rose to fame as a CNN anchor, becoming a mainstay of television business news. He began hosting his Fox program in 2011, lured by the network’s co-founder Roger Ailes, and was watched by a soon-to-be-very influential fan: Mr. Trump, who shared Mr. Dobbs’s right-wing values, particularly the anchor’s hard-line stance against unchecked immigration.The men also shared an interest in questioning President Barack Obama’s birthplace, a canard that helped lead to Mr. Dobbs’s exit from CNN in 2009.At the White House, Mr. Trump came to see Mr. Dobbs’s program as required viewing; his allies learned that an appearance on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” would guarantee attention in the West Wing. The president even patched in the television host during some policy discussions with his White House staff.Mr. Trump, who was barred from Twitter last month, has been circumspect since leaving the White House in what subjects he comments on. But roughly an hour after the news of Mr. Dobbs’s departure broke, the former president issued a statement to The New York Times.“Lou Dobbs is and was great,” Mr. Trump said. “Nobody loves America more than Lou. He had a large and loyal following that will be watching closely for his next move, and that following includes me.”Mr. Dobbs and his wife, Debi Segura, at a state dinner at the White House in 2019. Former President Donald J. Trump considered Mr. Dobbs’s show required viewing.Credit…Pool photo by Ron SachsThe loyalty went both ways. As recently as Thursday, his final day on Fox Business, Mr. Dobbs spoke disparagingly of Republican Party leaders for, in his view, showing insufficient loyalty to Mr. Trump. He described Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leaders in Congress, as “toadies for the Democratic Party.”Mr. Dobbs remains on contract with Fox, but the network has no plans to put him back on the air, according to a person briefed on its plans. For now, a rotating group of hosts will replace Mr. Dobbs in his 5 p.m. slot. The anchors Jackie DeAngelis and David Asman will sit in for him next week. (“Lou Dobbs Tonight” repeats at 7 p.m.) The cancellation was reported earlier by The Los Angeles Times.The Smartmatic lawsuit filed on Thursday cited a false claim from a November episode of “Lou Dobbs Tonight”: that Hugo Chávez, the former president of Venezuela, had a hand in the creation of Smartmatic technology, designing it so that the votes it processed could be changed undetected. (Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013, did not have anything to do with Smartmatic.)The Chávez claim was made by Ms. Powell, who worked as a lawyer for Mr. Trump and was a frequent guest on Mr. Dobbs’s program. She was also sued by Smartmatic on Thursday, along with Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Dobbs was also cited in the lawsuit for using the phrase “cyber Pearl Harbor” to describe a supposed vote-fraud conspiracy, borrowing language used by Ms. Powell.There are signs that the other hosts named in the suit, Ms. Bartiromo and Ms. Pirro, may be in a more favorable position with Fox management than Mr. Dobbs.It was clear weeks ago that defamation suits from Smartmatic and Dominion could be imminent. Since then, Ms. Bartiromo was picked to audition for a new 7 p.m. program on Fox News, and Ms. Pirro debuted a new travel program, “Castles USA,” on the Fox Nation streaming service, in which she visits castles around the country.Fox has pledged to fight the Smartmatic litigation, saying in a statement: “We are proud of our 2020 election coverage and will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court.”Don Herzog, who teaches First Amendment and defamation law at the University of Michigan, said it was possible that canceling Mr. Dobbs could aid Fox in its defense of the lawsuit. If Mr. Dobbs had continued to discuss Smartmatic or promote election fraud on his program, the network could have been liable for each new claim, Mr. Herzog said.Fox officials could also argue that the lawsuit made them aware of untruths that Mr. Dobbs had helped spread. And in a trial atmosphere, the cancellation of Mr. Dobbs’s program might help persuade jurors that the network was acting in good faith.Mr. Herzog said a responsible judge would counter that sentiment: “A judge should instruct a jury that what Fox does later to try to show they’re acting in good faith doesn’t settle the question of whether they were acting in good faith at some earlier time.”Such was the sudden nature of Mr. Dobbs’s exit that even the anchor who filled in for him on Friday, Mr. Asman, did not appear to have been briefed on the news.At the end of the 5 p.m. broadcast, Mr. Asman smiled at the camera, wished his viewers a happy weekend, and added a parting note:“Lou will be back on Monday.”John Koblin More

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      Three false claims about the election made in Mike Lindell’s new film.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThree false claims about the election made in Mike Lindell’s new film.One America News ran an extensive disclaimer before the broadcast.Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, has long been a vocal supporter of former President Donald J. Trump.Credit…Al Drago for The New York TimesKellen Browning and Feb. 5, 2021, 7:22 p.m. ETThe 2020 presidential election was three months ago, but one of the biggest backers of the false theory that it was rigged against former President Donald J. Trump has not given up his hope of overturning the results.On Friday, Mike Lindell, the embattled chief executive of MyPillow who helped finance Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to challenge election results, aired a falsehood-laden film about election fraud on One America News.The network promoted the two-hour film, titled “Absolute Proof,” on Twitter Thursday, urging viewers to join Mr. Lindell “for a never-before-seen report breaking down election fraud evidence & showing how the unprecedented level of voter fraud was committed in the 2020 Presidential Election.”There has been no substantial evidence of fraud in the election, which President Biden won. Mr. Lindell’s theories have led to Twitter removing him and MyPillow from its platform and several major retailers cutting ties with the pillow manufacturer.Before showing the film on Friday, the network ran an extensive disclaimer that described Mr. Lindell as “solely and exclusively responsible for its content,” and noted that “this program is not the product of OAN’s reporting” and was “presented at this time as opinions only.”YouTube took down “Absolute Proof” on Friday, saying it violated the company’s presidential election integrity policy, which prohibits false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the vote.Two companies that provide election technology, Dominion and Smartmatic, have filed defamation suits in recent weeks against people and organizations that have made baseless claims about the companies.Here are three much-examined areas that come up in the film. One America and Mr. Lindell did not respond to requests for comment.1. No, Dominion files were not manipulated.The crux of many arguments that election fraud occurred, and repeated in Mr. Lindell’s film, is the unsubstantiated claim that Dominion software was somehow manipulated to delete votes for Mr. Trump, or to hide some sort of conspiracy.Many of these unsubstantiated claims stem from an instance in Antrim County, Mich., when a clerical error in reporting results led the county to initially show a landslide vote in favor of Mr. Biden. The error was soon corrected, but conspiracy theorists have latched onto the incident as evidence that voting was rigged.Files “were deleted from the Dominion system in Antrim County. We know that for a fact,” Matt DePerno, a lawyer who has fought to investigate the incident, told Mr. Lindell in the film. “Wow,” Mr. Lindell responded.There has been no evidence that votes were manipulated in the county, and a hand-counted audit of votes in December affirmed the outcome there.2. No, foreign countries did not interfere with voting machines.Mr. Lindell interviewed retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, another member of the movement that fought to overturn the election. Mr. Waldron, who said his military background involves “information warfare,” pushed the unfounded claim that the Chinese government invested money in Dominion and therefore has access to its files and data.“A lot of movements of votes, direct access to Pennsylvania voting precincts, county tabulation centers, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, all of that coming directly from foreign countries, China being the predominant one,” Mr. Waldron said.He also claimed that overseas servers in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom somehow played a role in manipulating results. The manipulation, Mr. Waldron said, was “part of a coup that was aided and abetted by a foreign-threat nation-state, a peer enemy nation-state: China.”Election officials and cybersecurity experts have said there is no credible evidence that China helped Mr. Biden win the election.3. No, votes for Biden were not counted multiple times.Melissa Carone, an information technology worker who said she was contracted by Dominion for the election, was brought on the show to tell Mr. Lindell that she watched thousands of ballots run through voting machines without ever seeing a single vote for Mr. Trump.Ms. Carone, whose testimony was ruled “not credible” by a Michigan judge in November, told Mr. Lindell that when ballots jammed inside the machine, people tabulating the votes were re-scanning dozens of ballots and counting them twice.“It’s like counting a deck of cards, you could sit there and run the same deck of cards through this tabulator over and over and over again,” Mr. Lindell observed.Michigan election officials have said that ballots were “not scanned multiple times inappropriately.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Smartmatic Files $2.7 Billion Lawsuit Against Fox News

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFox News Is Sued by Election Technology Company for Over $2.7 BillionSmartmatic accused Rupert Murdoch’s network of promoting a false narrative about the 2020 election that damaged the company.A Smartmatic representative demonstrating the company’s vote-processing system in 2018.Credit…Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressJonah E. Bromwich and Feb. 4, 2021Updated 9:47 p.m. ETLeer en españolIn the latest volley in the battle over disinformation in the presidential election, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation has been sued by an obscure tech company that has accused his cable networks of defamation and contributing to the fervor that led to the siege of the Capitol.The suit pits Smartmatic, which provided election technology in one county, against Donald J. Trump’s longtime favorite news outlet and three Fox anchors, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro, all ardent supporters of the former president. A trial could reveal how Mr. Trump’s media backers sought to cast doubt on an election that delivered a victory to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a loss to an incumbent who refused to accept reality.Filed in New York State Supreme Court, Smartmatic’s suit seeks at least $2.7 billion in damages. In addition to Mr. Murdoch’s Fox Corporation, Fox News and the three star anchors, it targets Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, lawyers who made the case for election fraud as frequent guests on Fox programs while representing President Trump.In its 276-page complaint, Smartmatic, which has requested a jury trial, argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell “created a story about Smartmatic” and that “Fox joined the conspiracy to defame and disparage Smartmatic and its election technology and software.”“The story turned neighbor against neighbor,” the complaint continues. “The story led a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol.”Smartmatic filed the suit three months after an election repeatedly described as rigged or stolen by Mr. Trump and his supporters. Fox and its upstart competitors Newsmax and OANN gave significant broadcast time to hosts and commentators who argued against the election’s integrity at a time of a rancorous political divide, when conspiratorial notions have moved into the mainstream.Smartmatic’s suit follows two others filed last month by Dominion Voting Systems: one against Mr. Giuliani, the other against Ms. Powell. Dominion, a Smartmatic competitor, is another company that has figured prominently in baseless election-fraud theories.Even after the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, a deadly riot led by Trump loyalists, the talk of fraud has not fully died down. In an appearance on Tuesday on Newsmax, Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder who has been one of Mr. Trump’s devoted supporters, began an attack on Dominion. In a sign that the threat of defamation lawsuits has deterred media outlets that have broadcast conspiracy theories, the Newsmax anchor Bob Sellers cut off Mr. Lindell and read a statement: “The election results in every state were certified. Newsmax accepts the results as legal and final. The courts have also supported that view.”Lou Dobbs of the Fox Business Network is one of three Fox anchors named in the lawsuit.Credit…John Lamparski/Getty ImagesIn its complaint, Smartmatic said Fox programs became a venue for a number of falsehoods about the company in the weeks after the election, a time when powerful Republicans in Congress were sowing doubts about the vote’s outcome and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the majority leader, had yet to congratulate Joseph R. Biden Jr. on his victory.The suit cites a false claim, made by Ms. Powell on a November episode of Mr. Dobbs’s show on Fox Business, that Hugo Chávez, the deceased president of Venezuela, had a hand in the creation of Smartmatic technology, designing it so that the votes it processed could be changed undetected. (Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013, did not have anything to do with Smartmatic.)The lawsuit also cites exchanges on Fox programs that it says helped spread the claim that it was the owner of Dominion (it is not) and that it had provided its services to districts in contested states. (In fact, Smartmatic was used in the 2020 election only by Los Angeles County.) The lawsuit also says that Fox helped promote the false notion that the company had sent votes to other countries to be manipulated.Smartmatic added in its complaint that Fox’s broadcasting of the false claims “jeopardized” its “multibillion-dollar pipeline of business”; damaged its election technology and software businesses; and made it difficult for the company to get new business in the United States, where it had made inroads after years of servicing elections in other nations.A Fox spokeswoman disputed the claims in Smartmatic’s lawsuit, saying in a statement: “Fox News Media is committed to providing the full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear opinion. We are proud of our 2020 election coverage and will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court.”Ms. Powell, who said she had not seen or received notice of the suit, said: “Your characterization of the claims shows that this is just another political maneuver motivated by the radical left that has no basis in fact or law.”Ms. Bartiromo, Mr. Dobbs, Ms. Pirro and Mr. Giuliani did not immediately reply to requests for comment.In its frontal attack on Mr. Murdoch’s company, Smartmatic argues that Fox cast it as a villain in a fictitious narrative meant to help win back viewers from Newsmax and OANN. Those two networks saw ratings surges in the weeks after the election, thanks to their embrace of the fiction that Mr. Biden was not the rightful victor. The Smartmatic suit also argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell sought to enrich themselves and improve their standing with Mr. Trump’s supporters by making claims that were damaging to the company.After Smartmatic sent a letter to Fox requesting a retraction for what it called “false and misleading statements” about the company and threatening legal action, each of the shows led by the three Fox anchors aired a segment in which an election expert, Eddie Perez, debunked a number of false claims about Smartmatic. The prerecorded segment, broadcast in December, showed Mr. Perez responding to questions from an off-camera voice. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Perez said that the finished product “almost looked like a deposition.”Smartmatic’s complaint described not only the reputational and financial damage the company said it had suffered, but also the harm done to the United States by the claims promoted by Mr. Trump’s allies and the Murdoch-controlled networks he had long favored.Fox Corporation, with about 9,000 employees, is run by Mr. Murdoch, 89, and his elder son, Lachlan, its chief executive. A penalty of $2.7 billion would be hefty. Fox Corporation made $3 billion in pretax profit on $12.3 billion in revenue from September 2019 to September of last year. The company is valued at about $17.8 billion.Ms. Bartiromo, the host of shows on Fox Business and Fox News, conducted an interview with Mr. Trump on Nov. 29, his first lengthy TV interview after the election. Ms. Pirro, a onetime prosecutor whose “Justice with Judge Jeanine” is a staple of Fox News’s Saturday night lineup, has been friends with Mr. Trump for decades.Don Herzog, who teaches First Amendment and defamation law at the University of Michigan, said that the suit’s main argument made sense. “You can’t just make false stuff up about people,” he said. He expressed doubt about the suit’s linking the false statements on Fox to the Capitol attack, however, saying the events of Jan. 6 had no bearing on whether the defendants had harmed Smartmatic.The suit’s success would depend on a variety of factors, Mr. Herzog added, including whether Smartmatic can persuade a jury that the company did not have the standing of a public figure before Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell made it better known.If the court determines that Smartmatic was a public figure, the burden of proof for its claims will be higher. The company will have to show that the defendants knew that their statements were false or that they had serious doubts about them. In its complaint, Smartmatic argues that Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Powell and the three Fox anchors acted with “actual malice” and “recklessly disregarded” the veracity of their statements.While it may be difficult to persuade jurors that Fox is responsible for what guests say on its programs, Timothy Zick, a William & Mary Law School professor who specializes in First Amendment law, said the company could be held responsible for the content of its broadcasts.“If they knew that the segment was going to include these false statements, then I don’t think that relieves them of liability,” he said.At times, the language of the Fox hosts echoed that of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. The lawsuit cites Ms. Powell referring to the supposed vote-fraud conspiracy as a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” a phrase repeated by Mr. Dobbs on his show and on Twitter.Antonio Mugica, chief executive of Smartmatic, in London. While there, he said, he received a kidnapping threat.Credit…Henry Nicholls/ReutersWhen Smartmatic started in April 2000, it offered its services to banks. The shift to election security came after Antonio Mugica, a company founder and its chief executive, was in Palm Beach County during the contested 2000 election. “We were in the first row watching that circus,” he said. “And it really caused an impact on all of us.”The company had success providing its electronic voting machines, online voting platforms and software products for elections around the world. It was also used in the 2016 Republican presidential caucus in Utah. In 2018, Los Angeles County chose Smartmatic to develop a new election system, and its technology was used there in the March presidential primary and again in the general election.After Election Day, the company’s name, along with that of Dominion, became integral to the baseless theories promoted by right-wing media outlets. Smartmatic employees and their family members received threats, including death threats, some of which were noted in the complaint.“I had one in which I was told they were going to actually come kidnap me in London, where I was at the time,” Mr. Mugica said. “They were sending three people. ‘Plane is landing tomorrow.’”Edmund Lee contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Demanda millonaria a Fox News: una empresa de tecnología electoral acusa a la cadena de difamación

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemanda millonaria a Fox News: una empresa de tecnología electoral acusa a la cadena de difamaciónSmartmatic demandó a la corporación de Rupert Murdoch por promover una narrativa falsa sobre las elecciones de Estados Unidos de 2020 que perjudicó a la empresa.Un representante de Smartmatic demuestra el sistema de procesamiento de votos de la compañía en 2018.Credit…Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution vía Associated PressJonah E. Bromwich y 4 de febrero de 2021Actualizado 18:06 ETRead in EnglishLa corporación Fox de Rupert Murdoch y tres de sus populares presentadores son el objetivo de una demanda por difamación por 2700 millones de dólares presentada el jueves por una empresa que se convirtió en objeto destacado de las desacreditadas teorías sobre fraude generalizado en las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos de 2020.Smartmatic, una empresa de tecnología electoral, presentó el jueves la demanda en la Corte Suprema del Estado de Nueva York contra la Corporación Fox, Fox News y los presentadores Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo y Jeanine Pirro. Como parte de la misma acción, la compañía demanda a Rudolph W. Giuliani y Sidney Powell, quienes presentaron el caso de fraude electoral como invitados en los programas de Fox mientras representaban al expresidente Donald Trump.En su demanda de 276 páginas, Smartmatic argumenta que Giuliani y Powell “inventaron una historia sobre Smartmatic” y que “Fox se unió a la conspiración para difamar y desprestigiar a Smartmatic y su tecnología y software electoral”.“La historia puso a vecinos contra vecinos”, continúa la denuncia. “La historia llevó a una turba a atacar el Capitolio de Estados Unidos”.Smartmatic, que prestó servicios para las elecciones de 2020 en un solo condado, presentó su demanda en las tensas postrimerías de una votación que Trump y sus partidarios han descrito repetida y falsamente como amañada o robada. Los medios de derecha, incluyendo a Fox y sus competidores emergentes Newsmax y OANN, han dado un tiempo de difusión significativo a aquellos que buscan subvertir el resultado de las elecciones en un momento de rencorosa desavenencia política, cuando las teorías e ideas conspiratorias se han trasladado a la cultura dominante.Smartmatic pide una indemnización por daños y perjuicios de “no menos de 2700 millones de dólares”, según la demanda, y solicita un proceso con jurado. Su acción contra Fox sigue después de dos demandas presentadas el mes pasado por Dominion Voting Systems: una contra Giuliani, la otra contra Powell. Dominion es otra empresa nombrada por los teóricos de la conspiración que alegan que hubo fraude electoral.Incluso después del asalto al Capitolio el 6 de enero, un disturbio mortal que fue dirigido por partidarios de Trump, las conversaciones sobre fraude no se han acabado del todo. En una aparición el martes en Newsmax, Mike Lindell, el fundador de MyPillow y uno de los más fervientes defensores de Trump, lanzó un ataque verbal contra Dominion. En una señal de que las demandas de Dominion han tenido efecto en los medios de comunicación de la derecha, el copresentador de Newsmax, Bob Sellers, cortó a Lindell y leyó una declaración: “Los resultados de las elecciones en todos los estados fueron certificados. Newsmax acepta los resultados como legales y definitivos. Los tribunales también han apoyado esa opinión”.El presentador de Fox Business Network, Lou Dobbs, durante una emisión de 2019Credit…John Lamparski/Getty ImagesGiuliani y Powell argumentaron repetidamente que hubo fraude electoral cuando aparecieron como invitados en los programas de Fox conducidos por Bartiromo, Dobbs y Pirro en las semanas posteriores a las elecciones, un momento en el que los poderosos republicanos del Congreso sembraban dudas sobre el resultado de las elecciones y Mitch McConnell, senador por Kentucky y entonces líder de la mayoría del Senado, aún no había felicitado a Joe Biden por su victoria.Smartmatic dijo en la demanda que la promoción de las afirmaciones falsas en Fox “puso en peligro” su “cartera de negocios multimillonaria”: dañó sus negocios de tecnología y software electoral; y dificultó que la empresa consiguiera nuevos negocios en Estados Unidos, donde había hecho incursiones después de años de prestar servicios electorales en otras naciones.Fox declinó hacer comentarios antes de ver la demanda. Bartiromo, Dobbs, Pirro, Giuliani y Powell no respondieron inmediatamente a la solicitud de comentarios.En su ataque frontal contra el imperio mediático de Murdoch, Smartmatic argumenta que Fox lo presentó como villano en una narrativa ficticia destinada a ayudar a atraer espectadores de Newsmax y OANN. Cada una de ellas experimentó un aumento de la audiencia en las semanas posteriores a las elecciones, gracias a su adopción de la ficción de que Biden no era el vencedor legítimo. La demanda de Smartmatic también argumenta que Giuliani y Powell trataron de enriquecerse y mejorar su posición ante los partidarios de Trump al hacer declaraciones que eran prejudiciales para la empresa.Fox Corporation, con unos 9000 empleados, está dirigida por Murdoch, de 89 años, y su hijo mayor, Lachlan, su director ejecutivo. Para la empresa, 2700 millones de dólares sería una multa considerable. Fox Corporation obtuvo 3000 millones de dólares de utilidades antes de impuestos, con unos ingresos de 12.300 millones de dólares entre septiembre de 2019 y septiembre del año pasado. Está valorada en unos 17.800 millones de dólares.La queja de Smartmatic no solo considera el daño reputacional y económico que la compañía dijo haber sufrido, sino también el daño causado a Estados Unidos por las afirmaciones promovidas por los aliados de Trump y las cadenas controladas por Murdoch que Trump favoreció por mucho tiempo.Dobbs, presentador de Fox Business Network, y Bartiromo, quien presenta programas en Fox Business y Fox News, han sido partidarios incondicionales del expresidente. El 29 de noviembre, Bartiromo realizó la primera entrevista televisiva larga de Trump después de las elecciones. Pirro, quien fue fiscal y cuyo programa Justice with Judge Jeanine es un básico de la programación de los sábados por la noche de Fox News, ha sido amiga de Trump desde hace décadas.Entre las conversaciones al aire que destaca la demanda de Smartmatic está una entre Powell y Dobbs el 16 de noviembre. Powell afirmó en el programa de Dobbs que Hugo Chávez, el fallecido presidente de Venezuela, había participado en la creación de la tecnología de Smartmatic, diseñándola para que los votos que procesaba pudieran cambiarse sin ser detectados. (Chávez, quien murió en 2013, no tuvo nada que ver con Smartmatic).“El software de Smartmatic está en el ADN de todos los programas y sistemas de las empresas de tabulación de votos”, dijo Powell más adelante en el programa.Dobbs añadió: “Ni siquiera sabemos quién demonios es realmente el dueño de estas empresas, al menos de la mayoría de ellas”.Después de que Smartmatic envió una carta en diciembre pidiendo una rectificación y amenazando con acciones legales, los programas dirigidos por los tres presentadores de Fox emitieron un segmento en el que un experto en elecciones, Eddie Pérez, desacreditaba una serie de afirmaciones falsas sobre Smartmatic. El segmento pregrabado mostraba a Pérez respondiendo a preguntas de una voz fuera de cámara. En una entrevista el miércoles, Pérez dijo que el producto final “casi parecía una declaración” legal.La demanda argumenta que las afirmaciones hechas en Fox eran demostrablemente falsas, dado que la tecnología de Smartmatic se utilizó solo en el condado de Los Ángeles y no en ninguno de los estados disputados durante las elecciones de 2020.Don Herzog, un profesor que enseña sobre la Primera Enmienda y las leyes sobre difamación en la Universidad de Michigan, dijo que la esencia de la demanda tenía sentido. “No se pueden inventar cosas falsas sobre la gente”, dijo. Sin embargo, expresó sus dudas sobre la conexión de la demanda de las declaraciones falsas de Fox con el ataque al Capitolio, al decir que los acontecimientos del 6 de enero no tenían relación con que los acusados hubieran perjudicado a Smartmatic.El éxito de la demanda dependerá de varios factores, añadió Herzog, entre ellos si Smartmatic puede convencer a un jurado de que la empresa no tenía la categoría de figura pública antes de que Giuliani y Powell la hicieran más conocida.Si la corte determina que Smartmatic era una figura pública, entonces la carga de la prueba de sus alegatos será mayor. La empresa deberá mostrar que Giuliani, Powell y otros de los acusados sabían que sus aseveraciones eran falsas o que tenían serias dudas sobre su veracidad. (“No creo que la corte determinará que es una figura pública”, dijo Herzog). En su demanda, Smartmatic alega que los presentadores de Fox y los dos invitados actuaron con “verdadero dolo” y “desestimaron temerariamente” la veracidad de sus declaraciones.Aunque puede ser difícil persuadir a un jurado que Fox es responsable por lo que los invitados dicen en sus programas, Timothy Zick, profesor de la Escuela de Derecho William & Mary que está especializado en la Primera Enmienda, dijo que la compañía podía ser responsabilizada por el contenido de sus emisiones.“Si sabían que el segmento iba a incluir estas declaraciones falsas, entonces no creo que eso los exima de responsabilidad” dijo. “Republicar las declaraciones falsas de otros también resulta difamatorio en circunstancias como esta”.En ocasiones, el vocabulario de los presentadores de Fox simulaba al de los abogados de Trump. En la demanda se cita a Powell refiriéndose a la supuesta conspiración como “ciber Pearl Harbor”, una frase que Dobbs repitió en su programa y en Twitter.Roberta A. Kaplan, una abogada que representa a la escritora E. Jean Carroll en su demanda de difamación contra Trump, dijo que era notable la abundancia de casos de difamación relacionados con el expresidente, dado que dichos casos desde hace mucho se consideran difíciles de ganar.“Lo que ha cambiado y la razón por la que estamos viendo muchos más casos de difamación ahora más que antes es porque, francamente, vivimos en un mundo en el que las personas con legitimidad y autoridad parecen no sentir ningún tipo de reparo en decir mentiras categóricas”, dijo.Antonio Mugica, director ejecutivo de Smartmatic, en Londres en diciembreCredit…Henry Nicholls/ReutersCuando Smartmatic iniciaba en abril de 2000, ofreció sus servicios a los bancos. El cambio hacia los servicios de seguridad electoral se dio luego de que Antonio Mugica, uno de los fundadores de la compañía y su director ejecutivo, estuvo en el condado de Palm Beach durante la disputada elección de 2000. “Estábamos en primera fila viendo el circo”, dijo. “Y verdaderamente a todos nosotros nos impactó”.La empresa tuvo éxito en todo el mundo al ofrecer sus máquinas de votación electrónica, plataformas de voto en línea y productos de software relacionados con elecciones. También fue empleada en el caucus presidencial de los republicanos de 2016, celebrado en Utah. En 2018, el condado de Los Ángeles eligió a Smartmatic para implementar un nuevo sistema de elecciones y su tecnología se utilizó ahí en la primaria presidencial de marzo y una vez más en la elección general.Luego del día de las elecciones, el nombre de la empresa, junto con el de Dominion, se convirtió en parte integral de las conspiraciones de fraude que promovieron los medios de la derecha. Los empleados de Smartmatic y sus familiares recibieron amenazas, incluidas amenazas de muerte, que se describen en la denuncia.“Recibí una en la que me dijeron que iban a venir a secuestrarme a Londres, donde me encontraba en ese momento”, dijo Mugica. “Iban a mandar a tres personas. ‘El avión aterriza mañana’”.Otra amenaza, dijo, estaba dirigida al hijo adolescente de otro fundador de la empresa, Roger Piñate. “Lograron encontrar su número celular, lo que ya de por sí asusta”, dijo Mugica. “Y llamaron y lo amenazaron por teléfono”.La denuncia de Smartmatic incluye el argumento de que la promoción de teorías desacreditadas sobre la elección perjudicó a la democracia.“Uno no solo considera el efecto de la conducta en el denunciante, sino el impacto más amplio que puede tener el mensaje, y ese es un efecto más amplio de esto”, dijo J. Erik Connolly, un abogado que representa a Smartmatic. “Si estás adjudicando indemnización punitiva, que en gran parte está diseñada para decir ‘No vuelvas a hacer esto’, es un mensaje más amplio. Que es relevante para el mensaje más amplio que una corte o el jurado deberían enviar aquí”.Edmund Lee More

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      Clemency for Older Prisoners

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storylettersClemency for Older Prisoners“It is time for immediate action,” a law professor writes. Also: Angry Democrats; better ways to declutter.Feb. 4, 2021, 2:48 p.m. ETMore from our inbox:Enraged DemocratsNew Homes for Clutter, Not the Trash Can Credit…Seth Wenig/APTo the Editor:“Hard-Hit by Virus, Inmates Struggle to Find Place in Vaccine Line” (front page, Jan. 26) is an insight into the state’s failure to care for this highly vulnerable population. But it does not mention one simple option: clemency for older prisoners.Releasing the many long-serving prisoners over 65 who are not a danger to society would reduce crowding and the need for vaccination in prisons, while safeguarding the lives and health of these most vulnerable inmates. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has the power to do this right now (with appropriate quarantine). In many cases, he has clemency petitions on his desk.Governor Cuomo has promised rolling clemencies. When the new and highly transmissible Covid variants inevitably appear in prisons and their surrounding communities, vulnerable prisoners will face a death sentence, and all New Yorkers will be at risk from these hot spot facilities. It is time for immediate action.Cynthia Grant BowmanIthaca, N.Y.The writer, a law professor at Cornell, helped draft a clemency petition on behalf of one aged prisoner and filed amicus briefs in several New York State cases seeking release for others.Enraged Democrats Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s Base Nurses Anger Over Election” (front page, Jan. 19):Trump supporters are not the only ones enraged by the 2020 election. Many Democrats are enraged by the uphill battle necessary to overcome Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression targeting minorities. Many Democrats are enraged by being falsely accused of fraud and election interference by the Republicans who themselves undermined and attempted to overturn the election.Many moderates and progressives are angry at the far-right groups, including major media, that accuse the left of inciting the violent riot by the Trump mob at the Capitol. And many of us are furious at Donald Trump and his supporters for making public health measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and save lives into a political issue.The overwhelming majority that voted against Donald Trump have every reason to be angry at Mr. Trump and his supporters who feel so entitled that they are willing to bring down our democracy after they lost an election.Michael E. MahlerLos AngelesNew Homes for Clutter, Not the Trash Can Credit…Trisha KraussTo the Editor:Re “How to Declutter Quickly” (Here to Help, Jan. 27):I wish Melissa Kirsch had pointed out that the result of impulsively throwing things into the garbage is overflowing landfills that are a big problem for municipalities and the planet. The cake-decorating tips that she left at the curb might have been donated to a thrift store and then, for a dollar, might have provided a child being driven crazy by Zoom school with a fun activity. Clothing that was annoying Ms. Kirsch could have been donated to a local charity.It’s liberating to throw something into the garbage and be done with it, but it’s more considerate to try to find a new home for something we have purchased improvidently or no longer use.Diane S. GreenbergPalo Alto, Calif.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Trump-Supporting Congresswoman in New York City Stands Her Ground

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Trump-Supporting Congresswoman in New York City Stands Her GroundRepresentative Nicole Malliotakis represents Staten Island, where new Republican voters out-registered Democrats during the Trump administration.Representative Nicole Malliotakis said it was her duty to represent her more conservative, pro-Trump constituents. “There’s more of a burden on me now to hear their voice,” she said.Credit…Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesFeb. 4, 2021Updated 8:08 a.m. ETWhen Representative Nicole Malliotakis voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud, constituents and local Democrats protested outside her New York office.An editorial in her local paper, the Staten Island Advance, said she “let America down.”On Monday, a new political action committee — NICPAC, or Nicole Is Complicit PAC — raised more than $20,000 within four hours of launching its website.But Ms. Malliotakis unseated Max Rose, a Democrat, this past November in no small part because of her allegiance to former President Donald J. Trump, who endorsed her. The congresswoman has continued to stand firm with the former president’s base, even if that means leaving others behind.She said her loyalty was to New York’s Republicans, but especially to the narrow, conservative pocket of New York City — a swath of Staten Island and a portion of Brooklyn — that made her the only Republican elected to Congress from the five boroughs.“There’s more of a burden on me now to hear their voice,” Ms. Malliotakis, 40, said in an interview. “They want someone who is going to fight to be better, who is going to bring their perspective to the forefront, who is going to push back when policies are being proposed that will hurt them or cost them money or make their lives miserable.”Her stance could alienate the majority of New York voters, overwhelmingly Democratic, whom she needs to rise to higher office — or it could cement her place in New York politics as a rare Republican voice. Though there are more registered Democrats on Staten Island, which makes up the majority of Ms. Malliotakis’s district, Republicans registered far more new voters during the Trump administration than Democrats did, creating an invigorated, Trump-loving base that Ms. Malliotakis plays to.Ms. Malliotakis campaigning door to door in September in Staten Island. She unseated Max Rose, who was the Democratic incumbent.Credit…James Estrin/The New York TimesBut if she runs again in 2022, Ms. Malliotakis may face a completely different playing field. Congressional districts will be redrawn following the results of the 2020 census. New York could lose up to two congressional seats, decreasing its representation in the House from 27 people to 25, according to a prediction by Election Data Services, a political consulting firm.New York’s 11th District, which Ms. Malliotakis represents, will likely extend further into Brooklyn or into Lower Manhattan, picking up more Democratic voters and putting her seat in jeopardy.Some residents have been so unnerved by the events of Ms. Malliotakis’s nascent term that they are already plotting for her removal. NICPAC officially launched on Monday, establishing itself as a bipartisan watchdog organization of constituents both outraged over her decertification vote and disappointed in her lukewarm response to the Capitol riot. (Ms. Malliotakis’s statement condemned rioters and thanked the law enforcement officers.)The group plans to buy ads and conduct outreach to Ms. Malliotakis’s constituents, in order to “keep her accountable,” said Jonathan Yedin, a Democratic political operative and founding member of the PAC.“Some of us voted for her, some of us didn’t, but we’re all united in the message that she’s unfit to serve, given her actions,” Mr. Yedin said.Dan Hetteix, host of Radio Free Bay Ridge, a progressive politics podcast based in the 11th District, said Ms. Malliotakis had to try to secure her base to fend off opposition.“She needs to keep these new voters engaged in a ticket that doesn’t have Trump on it anymore,” Mr. Hetteix said. “She needs to make the most of Staten Island’s red voters. The more she can whip them up, the more she can resist whatever redistricting does to her.”Ms. Malliotakis defended her vote not to certify the presidential election results in a tweet. “I voted against certification of the two challenged states not to ‘overturn an election’ but to highlight need for a proper hearing into unconstitutional rule changes, irregularities and alleged fraud,” she wrote. “I swore an oath to the Constitution and REFUSED to turn a blind eye.”Peers find her ambitious, hardworking and sharp, and she has positioned herself as the antidote to the state’s far-left politicians. The congresswoman has even joined the “anti-socialist squad,” to counter a fellow New York representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and “the Squad.”Ms. Malliotakis is as much against unauthorized immigration and universal health care as she is in favor of strengthening bail laws and protecting father-daughter dances. But some local Democrats say that she’s a reactionary ideological flip-flopper.“She is someone who has changed everything she’s believed in every time she’s ever run for office,” said Kevin Elkins, a longtime adviser to Mr. Rose, whom Ms. Malliotakis defeated in November.Mark Murphy, a local businessman and former Democratic congressional candidate in the district, said he wants Ms. Malliotakis to move to the middle to better speak for all residents. “I want her to dial back the hard-core conservative ideology that is driving her, and think about who we, as a community, really are,” Mr. Murphy said.But Staten Island tends to vote Republican. In 2016 and 2020, it was the only borough in New York City that Mr. Trump won. Her base is expecting her to represent the sentiment of Trump voters in the district.In an interview, Ms. Malliotakis praised the successes of Mr. Trump’s term, proof, in her eyes, that he deserved to be re-elected: improved health care for veterans, low unemployment numbers, renegotiated trade deals. “People didn’t even know about the good things because the other side has been so busy criticizing him and trying to impeach him and investigate him over the four years, which I think was very unfair,” she said.Some believe that Ms. Malliotakis’s vote simply represented the wishes of a district that wanted to see Mr. Trump re-elected.“I really do believe she had a mandate from her constituents, who also overwhelmingly voted to support Trump, to object to the election results, as well as vote against impeaching the president,” said Peter Giunta, president of the Staten Island Young Republican Club.Allan Katz, a financial planner on Staten Island, voted for both Ms. Malliotakis and Mr. Trump last November. “Max Rose, when he was in office, voted for impeachment when most of his constituents wanted him to vote against it,” said Mr. Katz.In May, Ms. Malliotakis spoke at a rally in support of a tanning salon whose owner opened the business in defiance of coronavirus restrictions.Credit…Stephanie Keith/Getty ImagesSome of her supporters believe she is making all the right moves.“Number one, she is a rising star,” said Mike Long, the former chairman of the Conservative Party of New York, who has known Ms. Malliotakis for over a decade. “She knows exactly what she believes in and where she wants to go.”For years, Ms. Malliotakis has fought to be a significant Republican voice in the state.Born in New York in 1980 to Greek and Cuban immigrant parents, she grew up on Staten Island. Her mother fled the Castro regime in the late 1950s; her father arrived in the United States from Crete in 1962, with $50 to his name. One point of familial pride, she has said, is that neither of them took any public assistance.After working on state campaigns, Ms. Malliotakis was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2010. She gained citywide recognition when she faced Mayor Bill de Blasio in his 2017 re-election campaign, losing but ultimately seeing overwhelming support in her home borough, where about 70 percent of the population voted for her.In 2020, she challenged Mr. Rose in a particularly aggressive race. Ms. Malliotakis’s campaign seized on conservative backlash to the protests against racial injustice in the summer. Mr. Rose’s attendance at a single protest became a focal point of the campaign, enabling Ms. Malliotakis — who boasted the endorsement of five police unions — to accuse Mr. Rose of being a supporter of efforts to defund the police.She also grabbed Mr. Trump’s endorsement. Just four years earlier, she had served as the New York State chair for Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, and had openly criticized Mr. Trump’s behavior, using the #NEVERTRUMP hashtag on social media.But once Mr. Rubio lost the nomination, Ms. Malliotakis shifted from being against Mr. Trump to entrenching herself fervently in his camp. She even hosted a get-well rally for him after he tested positive for the coronavirus.Longtime friends and local politicians were confused by the sudden switch, claiming that she swung right to secure votes.Mike Arvanites, a surveyor for the city’s Board of Elections in Staten Island, has known Ms. Malliotakis for so long that he was present at her 40-day blessing and baptism in their Greek Orthodox Church. He pointed out that Ms. Malliotakis was elected to the New York State Assembly during the rise of the Tea Party, but she rejected the group’s extremism.“The year she was running for mayor, she explained to me that she was terrified of some Trump supporters,” Mr. Arvanites, a Democrat, said.He said he believed that Ms. Malliotakis has been radicalized by several in her camp, including Leticia Remauro, a Republican operative associated with Ms. Malliotakis’s congressional campaign and a longtime friend of the congresswoman. Last month, Ms. Remauro was pilloried for saying “Heil Hitler” in an earlier protest against coronavirus restrictions. (Ms. Malliotakis released a statement repudiating Ms. Remauro’s remarks.)Ms. Malliotakis made her loyalty clear, joining three New York-based representatives and other Republicans in Congress to vote to overturn the election results.But she said she would keep an open mind when it comes to President Biden.“I’m willing to hear him out,” Ms. Malliotakis said in her interview. “There are opportunities for us to work together where there is some common ground, when it comes to vaccine distribution, reopening the economy and returning the jobs that we lost.”“But,” she said, “I’m also mindful of the fact that I’m going to need to push back.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The QAnon Delusion Has Not Loosened Its Grip

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Campaign to Subvert the 2020 ElectionTrump’s RoleKey TakeawaysExtremist Wing of G.O.P.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe QAnon Delusion Has Not Loosened Its GripMillions of Americans continue to actively participate in multiple conspiracy theories. Why?Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.Feb. 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Jeff Swensen/Getty ImagesA conspiracy theory promulgated by Donald Trump, the loser of the 2020 presidential election, has gripped American politics since Nov. 3. It has been willingly adopted by millions of his followers, as well as by a majority of Republican members of Congress — 145 to 108 — and by thousands of Republican state and local officials, all of whom have found it expedient to capitulate to the fantastical claim that the election was stolen by the Democratic Party, its officeholders, operatives and supporters.Trump’s sprawling conspiracy theory is “being reborn as the new normal of the Republican Party,” Justin Ling wrote in Foreign Policy on Jan. 6.A Dec 30 NPR/Ipsos poll found that “recent misinformation, including false claims related to Covid-19 and QAnon, are gaining a foothold among some Americans.”According to the survey, nearly a fifth of American adults, 17 percent, believe that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics.” Almost a third “believe that voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election.” Even more, 39 percent, agree that “there is a deep state working to undermine President Trump.”The spread of these beliefs has wrought havoc — as demonstrated by the Jan. 6 assault on Congress, as well as by the overwhelming support Republicans continue to offer to the former president.Well before the election, on Aug. 22, 2020, my news-side colleagues Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman described the rising strength of conspiracists in Republican ranks in “The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump”:A small but growing number of Republicans — including a heavily favored Republican congressional candidate in Georgia — are donning the QAnon mantle, ushering its adherents in from the troll-infested fringes of the internet and potentially transforming the wild conspiracy theory into an offline political movement, with supporters running for Congress and flexing their political muscle at the state and local levels.Conspiracy theorists are by definition irrational, contradictory and inconsistent. Polarization, the Covid-19 pandemic and the specter of economic collapse have engendered suspicion. Many on the right see “liberal elites” pulling strings behind closed doors, and paranoia flourishes.According to Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, professors of political science at the University of Miami and Notre Dame, conspiracy theorists do not “hold coherent, constrained policy positions.” In a forthcoming paper, “Who Supports QAnon? A Case Study in Political Extremism,” Uscinski explores what he identifies as some of the characteristics of the QAnon movement: “Support for QAnon is born more of antisocial personality traits and a predisposition toward conspiracy thinking than traditional political identities and motivations,” he writes, before going on to argue thatWhile QAnon supporters are “extreme,” they are not so in the ideological sense. Rather, QAnon support is best explained by conspiratorial worldviews and a predisposition toward other nonnormative behavior.Uscinski found a substantial 0.413 correlation between those who support or sympathize with QAnon and “dark” personality traits, leading him to conclude that “the type of extremity that undergirds such support has less to do with traditional, left/right political concerns and more to do with extreme, antisocial psychological orientations and behavioral patterns.”The illogic of conspiracy theorists is clear in the findings of a 2012 research paper, “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,” by Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton, members of the psychology department at the University of Kent, and Michael J. Wood, a former Kent colleague. The authors found that a large percentage of people drawn to conspiracy thinking are willing to endorse “mutually incompatible conspiracy theories.”In one study, for example, “the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. Special Forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive.” In another study, “the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered.” For those who hold such beliefs, the authors wrote, “the specifics of a conspiracy theory do not matter as much as the fact that it is a conspiracy theory at all.”Douglas, in an email, wrote that “people are attracted to conspiracy theories when important psychological needs are not being met.” She identified three such needs: “the need for knowledge and certainty”; the “existential need” to “to feel safe and secure” when “powerless and scared”; and, among those high in narcissism, the “need to feel unique compared to others.”Uscinski and two collaborators, in their 2016 paper, “What Drives Conspiratorial Beliefs? The Role of Informational Cues and Predispositions,” describe how they identify likely conspiracy believers by asking respondents whether they agree or disagree with the following statements:“Events like wars, the recession, and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people who are working in secret against the rest of us”; “Much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places”; “Even though we live in a democracy, a few people will always run things anyway”; “The people who really ‘run’ the country, are not known to the voters.”Believers in conspiracies will often automatically dismiss factual claims disputing their beliefs. Jovan Byford, a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University in England, makes the case thatConspiracy theories seduce not so much through the power of argument, but through the intensity of the passions that they stir. Underpinning conspiracy theories are feelings of resentment, indignation and disenchantment about the world. They are stories about good and evil, as much as about what is true.Byford continues:Lack of evidence of a conspiracy, or positive proof against its existence, is taken by believers as evidence of the craftiness of those behind the plot, and their ability to dupe the public.There are five common ingredients to conspiracy theories, according to Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Mark van Vugt, professors of psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in their paper “Conspiracy Theories: Evolved Functions and Psychological Mechanisms.”First, they write,Conspiracy theories make an assumption of how people, objects, or events are causally interconnected. Put differently, a conspiracy theory always involves a hypothesized pattern. Second, conspiracy theories stipulate that the plans of alleged conspirators are deliberate. Conspiracy theories thus ascribe intentionality to the actions of conspirators, implying agency. Third, a conspiracy theory always involves a coalition, or group, of actors working in conjunction. An act of one individual, a lone wolf, does not fit the definition of a conspiracy theory. Fourth, conspiracy theories always contain an element of threat such that the alleged goals of the conspirators are harmful or deceptive. Fifth, and finally, a conspiracy theory always carries an element of secrecy and is therefore often difficult to invalidate.Van Prooijen elaborated on his analysis in an email:Conspiracy theories are a powerful tool to demonize opposing groups, and in extreme cases can make people believe that violence is necessary. In this case (Jan. 6), the crowd clearly believed that the elections were stolen from their leader, and this belief incited them to fight for what they believed was a just cause. Most likely the conspiracy theories make them perceive themselves as a sort of “freedom fighter.”Van Prooijen sees conspiracy thinking as deeply rooted in the evolutionary past.Our theory is that conspiracy theories evolved among ancestral humans to prepare for, and hence protect against, potentially hostile groups. What we saw here, I think was an evolutionary mismatch: some mental faculties evolved to cope effectively with an ancestral environment, yet we now live in a different, modern environment where these same mechanisms can lead to detrimental outcomes. In an ancestral world with regular tribal warfare and coalitional conflict, in many situations it could have been rational and even lifesaving to respond with violence to the threat of a different group conspiring against one’s own group. Now in our modern world these mechanisms may sometimes misfire, and lead people to use violence toward the very democratic institutions that were designed to help and protect them.Why, I asked, are Trump supporters particularly receptive to conspiracies? Van Prooijen replied:For one, the Trump movement can be seen as populist, meaning that this movement espouses a worldview that sees society as a struggle between ‘the corrupt elites’ versus the people. This in and of itself predisposes people to conspiracy thinking. But there are also other factors. For instance, the Trump movement appears heavily fear-based, is highly nationalistic, and endorses relatively simple solutions for complex problems. All of these factors are known to feed into conspiracy thinking.The events of Jan. 6, van Prooijen continued,underscore that conspiracy theories are not some “innocent” form of belief that people may have. They can inspire radical action, and indeed, a movement like QAnon can be a genuine liability for public safety. Voltaire once said: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities” — and he was right.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesIn their 2014 book “American Conspiracy Theories,” Uscinski and Parent argue that “Conspiracy Theories Are For Losers.” They write:Conspiracy theories are essentially alarm systems and coping mechanisms to help deal with foreign threat and domestic power centers. Thus, they tend to resonate when groups are suffering from loss, weakness or disunity.To illustrate how the out-of-power are drawn to conspiracy theories, the authors tracked patterns during periods of Republican and Democratic control of the presidency:During Republican administrations, conspiracy theories targeting the right and capitalists averaged 34 percent of the conspiratorial allegations per year, while conspiracy theories targeting the left and communists averaged only 11 percent. During Democratic administrations, mutatis mutandis, conspiracy theories aimed at the right and capitalists dropped 25 points to 9 percent while conspiracy theories aimed at the left and communists more than doubled to 27 percent.The “loser” thesis received strong backing from an August 2020 working paper, “Are Conspiracy Theories for Losers? The Effect of Losing an Election on Conspiratorial Thinking,” by Joanne Miller, Christina E. Farhart and Kyle Saunders, political scientists at the University of Delaware, Carleton College and Colorado State University.They make the parallel argument thatPeople are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories that make their political rivals look bad when they are on the losing side of politics than when they are on the winning side, regardless of ideology/partisanship.In an email, Miller compared polling from 2004, when John Kerry lost to George W. Bush, to polls after the 2020 election, when Trump lost to Biden:A 2004 a Post-ABC poll that found that 49 percent of Kerry supporters but only 14 percent of Bush supporters thought that the vote wasn’t counted accurately. But this year, a much larger percentage of Trump voters believe election fraud conspiracy theories than voters on the losing side in previous years. A January 2021 Pew poll found that approximately 75 percent of Trump voters believe that Trump definitely or probably won the election.Over the long haul, Miller wrote, “I find very little correlation between conspiratorial thinking and party identification or political ideology.” But, she quickly added. “the past four years are an outlier in this regard.”Throughout his presidency, Miller wrote,former President Trump pretty much governed as a “loser.” He continued to insist that he would’ve won the popular vote in 2016 had it not been for widespread election fraud. So it’s not surprising, given Trump’s rhetoric, that Republicans during the Trump presidency were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories than we’d have expected them to, given that they were on the winning side.The psychological predispositions that contribute to a susceptibility to conspiracy thinking are complex, as Joshua Hart, a professor of psychology at Union College, and his student, Molly Graether, found in their 2018 paper “Something’s Going on Here: Psychological Predictors of Belief in Conspiracy Theories.”Hart and Graether contend that “conspiracy theorists are more likely to believe that the world is a dangerous place full of bad people,” who “find it difficult to trust others” and who “view the world as a dangerous and uncontrollable.”Perhaps more interesting, Hart and Graether argue that conspiracy theorists are more likely “to perceive profundity in nonsensical but superficially meaningful ideas,” a concept they cite as being described by academics in the field as “b.s. receptivity.”To test for this tendency, psychologists ask participants to rank the “meaningfulness” of such incoherent and ludicrous sentences and phrases as “the future elucidates irrational facts for the seeking person,” “your movement transforms universal observations,” “the who silence infinite phenomena” and “the invisible is beyond all new immutability.” The scale is called “Mean perceived meaningfulness of b.s. sentences and genuinely meaningful sentences,” and can be found here.Adam M. Enders, a political scientist at the University of Louisville, argued in an email that:There are several characteristics of QAnon acolytes that distinguish them from everyone else, even people who believe in some other conspiracy theories: they are more likely to share false information online, they’re more accepting of political violence in various circumstances.In addition, Enders writes,QAnon followers are, in a sense, extremists both politically (e.g., wanting to overthrow the U.S. government) and psychologically (e.g., exhibiting many antisocial personality traits).Polarization, in Enders’s view, when joined with conspiracy thinking, produces a toxic mix:As polarization increases, tensions between political parties and other groups rise, and people are more willing to construct and believe in fantastical ideas that either malign out-groups (e.g., “Democrats are Satan-worshipping pedophiles”) or bolster the in-group (e.g., ‘we only lost because you cheated’). Conspiracy theories, in turn, raise the temperature of polarization and make it more difficult for people from different partisan and ideological camps to have fact-based discussions about political matters, even those that are in critical need of immediate attention.Conspiracy thinking has become a major internal, problem for the Republican Party, which is reflected by the current turmoil in party ranks over two newly elected congresswomen, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, QAnon sympathizers with long records of florid, antagonistic conspiratorial accusations.There is some evidence that the Republican establishment has begun to recognize the dangers posed by the presence in that party of so many who are preoccupied — obsessed is not too strong a word — with denying the incontrovertible truth of Trump’s loss and Biden’s win in the 2020 election.Even Mitch McConnell, perhaps the most cunning and nefarious member of the Republican establishment, has come to see the liability of the sheer number of supposedly reputable members of the United States Senate caving in to patent falsehoods, warning colleagues earlier this week of the threat to their political survival posed by the “loony lies and conspiracy theories” voiced by allies of QAnon in the House of Representatives.“Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality,” McConnell declared. “This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”McConnell has a history of bending with the wind, accommodating the extremists in his party, including Trump and Trump’s allies, and he voted in support of the claim that Trump’s second impeachment trial is unconstitutional. If the conspiracy wing of the Republican Party becomes strong enough to routinely mount winning primary challenges to mainstream incumbents, McConnell may well abandon his critique and accept a party moving steadily closer to something many Americans (though not all) could never have imagined: the systematic exploitation of voters gullible or pathological enough to sign on to preposterous conspiracy theories in order to engineer the installation in Washington of an ultraright, ethnonationalist crypto-fascist white supremacist political regime.The problem of keeping the extremist fringe at arm’s length has plagued the Republican Party for decades — dating back to Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society — but nothing in recent American history has reached the crazed intensity of Donald Trump’s perseverating, mendacious insistence that he won a second term in November. That he is not alone — that millions continue to believe in his delusions — is terrifying.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More