A New York appeals court reinstated defamation claims against Rudy Giuliani and Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro over false claims they made about voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Giuliani and Pirro were dismissed last year from the case filed by voting-machine maker Smartmatic Corp., which, along with Dominion Voting Systems Inc., was widely accused of rigging the election against Donald Trump as part of a vast conspiracy theory involving corrupt Democrats, foreign hackers and software linked to Venezuela. But the appellate court in Manhattan overruled that decision Tuesday.
Smartmatic adequately alleged that the two “made defamatory statements about plaintiffs’ involvement in the 2020 Presidential election while knowing that the statements were false, or at least with reckless disregard for the truth,” the five-judge panel said.
The company is also suing Fox News, Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, who helped spread the conspiracy theory on-air. Smartmatic’s claims against former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell were dismissed last year for lack of jurisdiction reasons and were not reinstated.
The appeals court on Tuesday did dismiss Fox News’s parent, Fox Corp., from the suit, saying its ownership of the network wasn’t sufficient to make it liable for defamation claims.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Adam S. Katz, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
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