The company says Donald Trump’s leading lawyer perpetrated «a viral disinformation campaign» based on «demonstrably false» charges.
Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, says the vast criminal conspiracy that supposedly denied his client a second term is «easily provable.» Yet Giuliani has never presented the evidence he claims to have. It supposedly shows that Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the election by supplying fraud-facilitating software that manufactured «hundreds of thousands» of phony votes for President Joe Biden. Now that Dominion has filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Giuliani, he will have to put up or shut up. Dominion’s 107-page complaint, which it filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Giuliani perpetrated «a viral disinformation campaign» based on «demonstrably false» claims about the company. According to the complaint, which is similar to the lawsuit that Dominion filed against former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell on January 8, that disinformation campaign forced the company to spend «more than $565,000 on private security for the protection of its people,» plus «more than $1,170,000» to «mitigate the harm to its reputation and business.» Dominion says the reputational damage inflicted by Giuliani’s conspiracy mongering has cost the company about $200 million in lost profits and destroyed its resale value, which it says was «between $450 million and $500 million before the viral disinformation campaign.» The company is seeking $651,735,000 in compensatory damages and the same amount in punitive damages. During the «Save America» rally that preceded the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Giuliani told thousands of Trump supporters that he was about to blow the lid off Dominion’s alleged role in delivering Georgia to Biden. «Over the next 10 days,» he said, «we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent. And if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail.» Giuliani claimed he had «conclusive proof» that «crooked Dominion machines» had switched Trump votes to Biden votes. «So let’s have trial by combat,» he said. «I’m willing to stake my reputation. The president is willing to stake his reputation on the fact that we’re going to find criminality there.» The very next day, Trump’s attorneys dropped four lawsuits challenging Georgia’s election results, claiming they had reached «an out of court settlement agreement,» which was news to the state’s lawyers.
