Pro-Trump cable channel Newsmax has filed a counter lawsuit against Smartmatic, arguing that the voting software firm is attempting to intimidate the network with its billion-dollar defamation lawsuit. As it had already done with Fox News and a spate of Trump allies, Smartmatic sued Newsmax in November for peddling false claims that the company flipped millions of votes from then-President Donald Trump during the 2020 election. (Voting software company Dominion filed a similar suit months earlier.) In its counterclaim, first reported by Bloomberg, the right-wing channel claims Smartmatic’s suit “violates a law against litigation intended to intimidate another party into silence on a matter of public interests.” Newsmax cites Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation statutes, otherwise known as anti-SLAPP laws, to make its case in the filing. The network isn’t alone in striking back at the voting software firms. MAGA pillow magnate Mike Lindell—who has been hit with multiple defamation claims—filed a federal lawsuit last year alleging Dominion and Smartmatic engaged in a conspiracy “to suppress free speech and extort silence from dissenters.
The decision is preliminary and not yet final, but it’s still one of the first times a court anywhere has treated an AI’s answer as the company’s own words rather than a neutral list of search res...