Election tech firms file lawsuits over conspiracy coverage. Is One America News next?

After devoting months of airtime to the baseless conspiracy theory of a rigged presidential election, the Trump-friendly One America News Network is eyeing potential legal exposure as the threat of litigation looms.

The ultra-conservative news outlet, based in San Diego, has already been named in one defamation lawsuit filed by a Dominion Voting Systems executive who says the coverage has made him fear for his life.

The election technology company — the target of much of the coverage — has also sent letters to One America News, or OAN, promising to go to court if the record isn’t retracted and corrected. Dominion lawyers have further advised social media platforms to preserve relevant posts by several conservative news outlets, including OAN.

The request comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed by Dominion against Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Last week, Smartmatic, another election system caught up in the conspiracy, filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, some of its hosts and the two attorneys.

“Dominion has not ruled anyone out,” a company spokesperson said Wednesday when asked about the potential for further lawsuits. “There will be additional lawsuits, and the company is continuing to take an evidence-based look at others who orchestrated and amplified the disinformation campaign.”

OAN President Charles Herring responded to the threat of being sued, telling the Union-Tribune: “In general, we undertake considerable efforts to ensure our reporting is proper and do our best not to let threats from outside influences silence our news coverage. Media outlets cannot perform effectively for their audience and the public at large if they let threats and intimidation squelch unfavorable coverage.”

A few weeks ago, much of OAN’s voting-conspiracy coverage disappeared from its website, according to an analysis by Business Insider.

Last week OAN promoted a paid documentary by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell called “Absolute Proof” that continues to push the conspiracy, but not before running a disclaimer that said the program is not the product of OAN reporting and that the opinions and claims are not adopted or endorsed by OAN.

However, OAN ended the disclaimer by defending the decision to air the program: “The results in the 2020 Presidential election remain disputed and questioned by millions of Americans who are entitled to hear from all sides in order to help determine what may have happened.”

The conspiracy of a rigged election, promoted heavily by former President Donald Trump, has largely centered on claims that voting technology systems were compromised to flip votes to President Joe Biden and the companies were corrupted through ties to foreign governments and high-profile Democrats. Courts across the country have found no merit to the claims of widespread election fraud.

In its cease-and-desist letters to OAN, Dominion detailed the many statements it considers false and defamatory that the channel has aired, including a report that was retweeted by Trump.

In December, Dominion executive Eric Coomer filed a state lawsuit in Denver against OAN’s parent company Herring Networks, other right-leaning news outlets, the Trump campaign and conservative activists. The complaint accuses the news organizations of amplifying an unverified claim by an activist that Coomer was affiliated with antifa — a loosely organized movement opposing fascism — and was overheard on a conference call that he would make sure Trump didn’t win the election.

“To be clear, Dr. Coomer has no knowledge of an alleged ‘Antifa Conference Call;’ Dr. Coomer did not participate in such an alleged call; Dr. Coomer did not make the comments Defendants falsely attribute to him; and Dr. Coomer did not take actions to subvert the presidential election as Defendants falsely allege,” the lawsuit states. “Despite the inherent unreliability of these claims, Defendants widely disseminated this false narrative.”

Coomer was faced with violent threats following the reports and had to go into hiding for his safety, the suit states.

The family-owned Herring Networks has not yet filed a response to the allegations, according to court records.

The lawsuit adds to OAN’s previous and existing legal battles.

Herring Networks lost a defamation suit last year that it brought against MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. In an order last Friday, a San Diego federal judge ordered Herring Networks to pay roughly $247,600 in attorney fees and some $10,700 in costs to Maddow and her employers for their efforts fighting the claims.

The lawsuit centered on Maddow’s on-air comments on The Rachel Maddow Show on July 22, 2019, in which she said OAN “really literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

The segment was referring to a Daily Beast story that revealed an OAN writer was also writing stories for Sputnik News, an outlet backed by the Russian government. Lawyers for the Herring Networks said that OAN was not aware of the writer’s freelance work and that the channel had not accepted any money from the Russian government.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant found that reasonable viewers of the segment “would not take the statement as factual” given the surrounding context.

“The contested statement is an opinion that cannot serve as the basis for a defamation claim,” Bashant wrote in dismissing the case.

Herring Networks is appealing the dismissal, with oral argument at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals possible in late spring or early summer.

Charles Herring said in an email that his family “is highly confident that we’ll receive a favorable and just ruling” on appeal.

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