Newsmax agreed to pay Smartmatic $ 40 million as part of an agreement last year after the demand for electoral defamation of the voting technology company against the media on the right, according to a new regulatory presentation.
The agreement, reached in September, included a cash payment and an option to buy shares in Newsmax, said the media company in its presentation. Newsmax said payments for a total of $ 20 million have already been made, and the rest arrived before July.
“Management believes that the agreement with Smartmatic, subject to the payment of all consideration in a timely manner, will eliminate the future legal expenses that the company would have hoped to relate to this demand, which could have included expensive legal actions of appeal and other issues,” Newsmax wrote.
Newsmax did not immediately respond to a request for comments on Thursday night.
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The details of the payments provide information on the confidential settlement agreement that were not publicly available last year. The 2021 demand focused on the false statements of Newsmax that Smartmatic machines manipulated the 2020 presidential elections in favor of Joe Biden. An agreement was reached shortly before the case was ready to judge.
After the agreement last year, Newsmax said in a statement that “he acknowledges that the Court determined that ‘accusations about whether the [2020 U.S. presidential election] and their results were altered or manipulated in some way by Smartmatic are objective/false objectives. ”
Smartmatic established a defamation demand related in April against One America News for a sum that was not publicly revealed.
J. Erik Connolly, an external Smartmatic lawyer, said in a statement on Thursday that the company now focuses on a similar case against Fox News.
“We hope to present our evidence to a jury and finally have the opportunity to hold Fox responsible for his harmful actions,” said Connolly.
Fox has said that he covered events of journalistic interest and people surrounding the 2020 elections.
The Fox News parent company, Fox Corp., reached an agreement in 2023 to pay $ 787.5 million to the Dominion Voting Systems electoral technology company to resolve defamation claims.
