One of the founders of LinkedIn, billionaire Reid Hoffman, is backing a voting technology company that is suing Fox News and Newsmax for defamation.
The Washington Post reports that Hoffman has invested millions of dollars into the company partly to help it finance the lawsuits. Smartmatic says that the two conservative news outlets hurt the company’s image with their claims of electoral and vote-counting fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
“Smartmatic built a global business by using technology to better engage citizens, regardless of party or ideology, by making voting simple and trustworthy,” Hoffman said in a statement. “After Donald Trump lost in 2020, however, Smartmatic became a target of the defamatory campaign to overturn his defeat.”
Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica issued a statement refuting the right-wing attacks against it.
“Smartmatic’s technology has counted seven billion votes on six continents with zero security breaches,” Mugica said. “Voters, candidates, and election officials in all of those elections are watching to see if we still stand up for the truth against lies. Rest assured, we do.”
Billionaires have attempted to aid lawsuits for ideological reasons in the past. Right-wing tech mogul Peter Thiel infamously backed a series of lawsuits against Gawker Media after it published a story outing him. This isn’t the first lawsuit that Hoffman has backed against conservative figures, either: He also helped fund E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing Trump of rape and defamation.
There’s no trial date as of yet for Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox. The media network settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems in April 2023 to the tune of $787.5 million, nipping what would have been an unprecedented trial process in the bud. Will Hoffman want Smartmatic to seek a settlement, or will he want to get his money’s worth and force Fox News to trial?
