Newsmax has agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $67 million to settle the voting software firm’s defamation lawsuit over the right-wing network’s promotion of baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
The settlement was first revealed in a financial filing on Monday, noting that the company came to terms with the conservative channel last week. Newsmax has agreed to pay $27 million to Dominion this month and an additional $40 million over the next two years.
“We are pleased to have settled this matter,” a Dominion spokesperson said on Monday, declining to offer any additional comment.
In a defiant statement posted online after submitting the filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as required for a publicly traded company, Newsmax maintained that it was merely covering both sides of the 2020 presidential election.
“Newsmax believed it was critically important for the American people to hear both sides of the election disputes that arose in 2020,” the network stated. “We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism.”
Newsmax also claimed that “despite its confidence in its reporting,” the network “determined the Delaware Court with Judge Eric Davis presiding over the case would not provide a fair trial wherein the company could present standard libel defenses to a jury.”
Davis, as Newsmax noted, was the same judge who presided over Dominion’s similar defamation lawsuit against Fox News, which resulted in the conservative cable giant paying out a record $787.5 million in 2023 to settle the case just as the trial was about to start.
Dominion, as it did with Newsmax, accused Fox News of promoting Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen” due to fraudulent voting machines, all in an effort to boost television ratings. Following Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, Newsmax experienced a surge in viewership as its hosts and guests embraced election denialism on-air.
“Judge Davis also presided over the case of Dominion vs. Fox News where he was harshly criticized by then Fox’s chief legal officer for his actions and rulings,” Newsmax wrote in its online article.
Earlier this spring, Davis ruled that Newsmax had defamed Dominion by falsely accusing the company of rigging the election against Trump, stating that it would be up to a jury to decide whether Newsmax committed “actual malice” against Dominion and if the network should be required to pay millions of dollars in damages.
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