Newsmax Feels The Pressure

Facing lawsuit threats from voting-tech companies, Newsmax has had to walk back the pro-Trump conspiracy-mongering it had done since the election pushing bogus claims of election fraud.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 5/3/2021

Newsmax, in a statement, said that “Newsmax itself has never made a claim of impropriety about Smartmatic, its ownership or software.”

“Individuals, including plaintiff’s attorneys, Congressmen and others, have appeared on Newsmax raising questions about the company and its voting software, citing legal documents or previously published reports about Smartmatic,” Newsmax’s statement said.

“As any major media outlet, we provide a forum for public concerns and discussion. In the past we have welcomed Smartmatic and its representatives to counter such claims they believe to be inaccurate and will continue to do so.”

But late on Dec. 19 (a Saturday night, a news dead zone), it quietly published an unbylined article, credited only to "Newsmax Wires," headlined "Facts About Dominion, Smartmatic You Should Know."

Newsmax began by stating that "Newsmax would like to clarify its news coverage and note it has not reported as true certain claims made about these companies." Then, the walkbacks began:

There are several facts our viewers and readers should be aware. Newsmax has found no evidence either Dominion or Smartmatic owns the other, or has any business association with each other.

We have no evidence Dominion uses Smartmatic’s software or vice versa.

No evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election.

Smartmatic has stated its software was only used in the 2020 election in Los Angeles, and was not used in any battleground state contested by the Trump campaign and Newsmax has no evidence to the contrary.

Dominion has stated its company has no ownership relationship with the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's family, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's family, the Clinton family, Hugo Chavez, or the government of Venezuela.

Neither Dominion nor Smartmatic has any relationship with George Soros.

Smartmatic is a U.S. company and not owned by the Venezuelan government, Hugo Chavez or any foreign official or entity.

Smartmatic states it has no operations in Venezuela. While the company did election projects in Venezuela from 2004 to 2017, it states it never was founded by Hugo Chavez, nor did it have a corrupt relationship with him or the Venezuelan government.

Newsmax TV host John Tabacco later read this statement on the air.

Omitted from the statement is the fact that Newsmax has uncritically forwarded false attacks on Smartmatic and Dominion. On Nov. 15, for instance, Eric Mack uncritically quoted Rudy Giuliani ranting: "Dominion, when you look into it with just a little bit of investigation, you find out that Dominion uses a software, Smartmatic, which is a company that goes back to 2004. It was founded by two Venezuelans and Cesar Chavez. It has a terrible history of having fixed elections in Argentina, having fixed elections in Venezuela. It was all outlined in 2008 by the House of Representatives."

On Nov. 17, it uncritically quoted columnist Dick Morris saying on a Newsmax TV show, "I do not necessarily believe it was a retail fraud, you know, vote by vote, count by count. ... I think it may well have originated in the Dominion software, in the Smartmatic software that the polling people, voting people used."

One can even go back to 2016, when a Newsmax article documented an appearance on Fox News by Trump supporter Betsy McCaughey, who claimed that "More investigation is needed to be made into Smartmatic, a British voting machine company that is 'very involved' with billionaire George Soros' 'left wing globalist enterprises." McCaughey went on to claim that there is "airtight case against Soros to tilt this election," as he's "very close to Hillary Clinton."

Like Fox News -- which did a similar walkback after receiving a similar legal notice from Smartmatic -- Newsmax does understand the power of a threatened lawsuit over something it couldn't possibly defend.

Understandably, this legal threat put Newsmax in a bit of a tizzy -- and on the defensive. Eric Mack worked up a little outrage in a Jan. 17 article in which he claimed, "CNN is making no mistake about it: It wants to censor and close Newsmax from broadcasting as a cable news channel." Mack kept up the outrage:

Apparently jolted by the fact Newsmax has skyrocketed to become the 4th highest-rated cable news channel in the country, the liberal CNN is decrying what it calls Newsmax's "election denialism" and is seeking to have it "deplatformed" from cable and satellite systems across the nation.

Oliver Darcy, CNN's leftwing media critic, has been demanding cable operators drop Newsmax, which is currently carried by every major system in the nation. Newsmax is also streamed free by most OTT platforms and devices.

In a CNN column in early January, Darcy falsely claimed conservative media caused the protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

"After all, it was the very lies that Fox, Newsmax, and OAN spread that helped prime President Trump's supporters into not believing the truth: That he lost an honest and fair election," Darcy wrote.

Mack offered no evidence that Darcy is "leftwing" other that he criticized Newsmax. Instead, he continued to attack Darcy:

Darcy doubled down, advancing the McCarthy-like political witch hunt by tweeting a fresh demand cable operators which carry Newsmax consider closing down the outlet:

"Just a reminder that neither @Verizon, @ATT, nor @comcast have answered any questions about why they beam channels like OAN [sic] & Newsmax into millions of homes. Do they have any second thoughts about distributing these channels given their election denialism content? They won't say."

In his tweet, Darcy failed to note AT&T is the parent company of CNN, and by removing Newsmax from cable lineups it reduces serious competition for his network, especially as Newsmax continues to rapidly increase audience and is on a trajectory to overtake CNN in viewership.

In fact, AT&T no longer operates cable TV systems, though it does currently offer a streaming TV service. Mack continued:

In a statement released Sunday, Newsmax said, contrary to Darcy's and Stamos' claims, Newsmax never denied the election results.

The network called all contested states for Biden as they were certified and accepted him as president-elect Dec. 14, after the meeting of the Electoral College.

Newsmax also noted, while it justifiably covered the president's allegations about the election, and interviewed his lawyers and supporters – as did Fox News and Fox Business News, it never said all allegations were true.

Newsmax won't tell you that it did, in fact, present those claims without question, never subjecting them to the kind of fact-checking one would expect from a legitimate news organization -- thus implying to its readers that the claims are true.

Newsmax columnists from James Hirsen to Dick Morris to Michael Dorstewitz have pushed bogus election fraud conspiracy theories, and Newsmax "news" article also uncritically forwarded baseless or false election fraud conspiracy theories without informing readers they were false.

To cite another example of that: A Dec. 23 "news" article by Sandy Fitzgerald touted how "President Donald Trump Tuesday night released a 14-minute long video through Facebook declaring the election had been stolen from him in favor of Joe Biden because of "monstrous fraud." ... He added that he has proof of "overwhelming election fraud." But Fitzgerald uncritically repeated Trump's claims, refusing to subject a single one to any sort of fact-check.

Interestingly, Mack made no mention of his employer walking back its reporting on voting-tech companies Dominion and Smartmatic after receiving a legal notice from Smartmatic accusing it of publishing false and defamatory claims about the company -- one of the major pieces of evidence that Newsmax has, in fact, engaged in "election denialism."

Instead, Mack closed with the final sentence of the Newsmax statement, which went into whataboutism mode: "The network did note, after years of CNN falsely claiming the Steele Dossier was valid and the Russian collusion claim against Trump was credible, it was never held accountable for its misreporting. Newsmax never called for CNN to be shut down." Newsmax provided no evidence that CNN actually did any of that.

Newsmax's defensiveness over the Dominion/Smartmatic issue continued. So sensitive was Newsmax about the legal repercussions that, when MyPillow guy Mike Lindell appeared on Newsmax TV to spread more election-fraud conspiracies, host Bob Sellers first tried to get him to shut up, and when the failed, he walked off the set. (There was apparently no actual bad blood between the two entities over the incident, because Lindell was back on Newsmax TV later that day declaring that Newsmax is "great," with Newsmax sucking up in kind by noting that it published a story about Lindell's situation encouraging readers to support the courageous businessman from cancel culture targeting.")

In a Feb. 17 article on Dominion Voting Systems suing Lindell for defamation, Newsmax tried to distance itself from the controversy (and, of course, avoid getting sued by Dominion itself):

The suit is the latest in a series of multibillion-dollar court actions taken by voting machine companies against high-profile supporters of Donald Trump, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, claiming they spread disinformation about voter fraud.

Newsmax received a letter from Dominion in late December threatening litigation.

While Newsmax covered and reported on allegations made by President Trump and his attorneys, it never claimed such allegations were true. Newsmax published and aired several stories and reports sharing Dominion’s response to the President’s allegations.

To further clarify its position, and before any legal action was threatened against it, Newsmax stated that it had had found no evidence that Dominion manipulated voting software during the 2020 election.

Newsmax served up another version of that disclaimer in a Feb. 22 article on Dominion suing MyPillow guy Mike Lindell for spreading lies about the company, right down to the double "had" in the final paragraph.

Newsmax repeated its disclaimer (though not the same exact language) in a March 26 article on Dominion filing a defamation suit against Fox News for doing essentially the same thing Newsmax did. But it also tried to play whataboutism with the Mueller investigation into Trump:

Conservative critics of the suits claim the litigation has been an attempt to squelch dissent about the election results that emanated from then-President Donald Trump and his lawyers.

They also noted that major media and networks published and broadcast multiple stories relating to claims of a conspiracy between the Russian government and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Exhaustive investigations by Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence such allegations were true.

In fact, there were numerous contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, but the evidence did not rise to a criminal level.

Settling with Dominion executive

Mere statements alone, however, may not save Newsmax from legal repercussion. In a Friday news dump, Newsmax has apologized to Dominion official Eric Coomer in an April 30 statement published on its website:

Since Election Day, various guests, attorneys, and hosts on Newsmax have offered opinions and claims about Dr. Eric Coomer, the Director of Product Strategy and Security at Dominion Voting Systems.

Newsmax would like to clarify its coverage of Dr. Coomer and note that while Newsmax initially covered claims by President Trump’s lawyers, supporters and others that Dr. Coomer played a role in manipulating Dominion voting machines, Dominion voting software, and the final vote counts in the 2020 presidential election, Newsmax subsequently found no evidence that such allegations were true. Many of the states whose results were contested by the Trump campaign after the November 2020 election have conducted extensive recounts and audits, and each of these states certified the results as legal and final.

There are several facts that our viewers should be aware of. Newsmax has found no evidence that Dr. Coomer interfered with Dominion voting machines or voting software in any way, nor that Dr. Coomer ever claimed to have done so. Nor has Newsmax found any evidence that Dr. Coomer ever participated in any conversation with members of “Antifa,” nor that he was directly involved with any partisan political organization.

On behalf of Newsmax, we would like to apologize for any harm that our reporting of the allegations against Dr. Coomer may have caused to Dr. Coomer and his family. For more on this, please go to our website at Newsmax.com, and read “Facts About Dominion, Smartmatic You Should Know.”

Newsmax doesn't say so, but the statement is part of a settlement of a lawsuit Coomer filed against right-wing personalities and outlets for pushing those false claims; as a result of this and other undisclosed terms, Coomer has dropped Newsmax from the lawsuit.

Newsmax's settlement puts pressure on the other defendants in the lawsuit, including Joe Oltmann, the main source of the apparently false claims against Coomer. It also puts pressure on WorldNetDaily, even though it's not named in the lawsuit; WND columnist James Zumwalt uncritically repeated Oltmann's claims in a Dec. 2 column that remains inexplicably live and unedited (as of this writing) on the WND website despite the legal jeopardy it has put WND into.

Defensive about Capitol riot coverage

Newsmax's aggressiveness in pushing bogus claims of election fraud is not the only thing that has Newsmax on the defensive. In a Feb. 22 article, Marisa Herman complained on a related issue, a letter from two "Democrat [sic] House lawmakers" who are "demanding answers from cable television providers on the role they play in the 'spread of dangerous misinformation,'" one of them being Newsmax:

Newsmax issued a statement Monday decrying what the company said was an attack on the First Amendment. The Newsmax statement read:

"The House Democrats' attack on free speech and basic First Amendment rights should send chills down the spines of all Americans. Newsmax reported fairly and accurately on allegations and claims made by both sides during the recent election contest. We did not see that same balanced coverage when CNN and MSNBC pushed for years the Russian collusion hoax, airing numerous claims and interviews with Democrat leaders that turned out to be patently false.

Newsmax noted that the Eschoo-McNerney letter makes several false or misleading characterizations of its coverage.

While Newsmax reported on President Trump's contest of the 2020 elections, covering the claims he and his attorneys made, the Democrats said such reporting was "incendiary."

The letter also states, "As a violent mob was breaching the doors of the Capitol, Newsmax's coverage called the scene a ‘sort of a romantic idea.'"

The claim was made on Newsmax by a Touro College law professor and prominent liberal, Thane Rosenbaum, who was describing the rally before any violence or illegal activity had taken place at the Capitol.

In fact, Newsmax hosts began condemning the illegal activity that took place at the Capitol in real time, and did so repeatedly throughout the day.

The article was accompanied by a compilation clip of Newsmax TV's Jan. 6 "news coverage." But it's hours of coverage condensed to less than two minutes, which means that Newsmax edited out any coverage that wasn't critical of the riot -- including the "sort of a romantic idea" statement. (Also: Newsmax could only find two minutes of people denouncing the riot on its TV channel across hours of programming?)

Many of these claims are repeated in a Feb. 24 article by Eric Mack touting a letter from Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy responding to the House members' letter:

"In general, Newsmax reported fairly and accurately on allegations and claims made by both sides during the recent election contest. Newsmax called the election for President Joe Biden as soon as the states had certified their election results. Further, Newsmax forcefully and repeatedly used its airwaves to condemn the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6."

Ruddy's letter to the committees also provided myriad examples of Newsmax TV's Jan. 6 coverage of the storming of the Capitol, in which on-air talent said, "We condemn the violence" ("Greg Kelly Reports"); "We certainly don't condone" violence (Tom Basile on "America Right Now"); and "This is un-American, this is not what we do. We are better than this and we must denounce this" (Sean Spicer on "Spicer & Co.").

Ruddy again threw Rosenbaum under the bus without proving a clip of the full segment in which he appeared.

Newsmax needs to give the public access to the entirety of its Jan. 6 TV coverage -- not a highly edited two-minute highlight reel -- so we can judge exactly how biased it was that day.