Justice is still coming for 2020’s election denial super-spreaders

Donald Trump and many of his loyal foot soldiers won’t face justice for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election before the 2024 election. But for some, including Christian influencers and media personalities who put faith in Trump’s claims and promoted them to their audiences, days of reckoning are coming — if slowly — no matter who’s elected president.

Last year, Dominion Voting Systems won a historic $787.5 million defamation settlement against Fox News. Other defamation cases filed by individuals, counties and states and another voting machine company continue to move forward, while some already have been settled.

Here’s a look at where some of the most prominent Christians’ cases stand now.

State cases

Five states — Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada — have indicted more than 60 people who tried to overturn state election results, but most of these trials remain far off.

Jenna Ellis, a Christian attorney who worked with James Dobson, Alliance Defending Freedom and other Christian groups before joining Trump’s White House legal team, was indicted in both Georgia (where she pled guilty) and in Arizona (where she agreed in August to help the state’s attorney general press his case). Ellis has been disbarred in Colorado but continues to host programs for Salem Media and the American Family Association.

She was part of Rudy Giuliani’s “crack legal team” that unsuccessfully worked to have state election results overturned. Giuliani faces many lawsuits. He was found guilty of defaming Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss and ordered to pay them $148 million. Giuliani unsuccessfully sought bankruptcy protection, and a judge recently ruled he must turn over his New York City apartment and other assets to the two women.

In Colorado, 70-year-old Mesa County clerk Tina Peters, who was supported by health-and-wealth preacher Andrew Wommack, was sentenced in October to nine years in prison for her role in a conspiracy to open her county’s voting machines to co-conspiracists, including Mike Lindell.

Film lacking evidence withdrawn

Christian conspiracist Dinesh D’Souza and a group called True the Vote created the pseudo-documentary 2,000 Mules which claimed that 2,000 human “mules” harvested 400,000 fake ballots that rigged the 2020 election against Trump. But when challenged in court last February, attorneys for the filmmakers acknowledged they had no evidence for their extraordinary claims.

The film was distributed by Salem Media, a Christian-owned company that said revenue from the film exceeded $10 million. It was screened in hundreds of churches and on major Christian TV networks.

But after being sued for defamation by a man falsely portrayed as a “mule” in the film, Salem withdrew it from circulation in May, apologized for distributing it and sold off the publishing company that released a 2,000 Mules companion book.

Salem has made no public effort to inform those who saw the film that it was based on falsehoods. Salem and D’Souza face further defamation cases.

Voting machine cases

Mike Lindell, the Christian layman who founded MyPillow before becoming a leading election denialist, faces a horrendous legal and financial scenario:

• He has been sued for more than $1 billion in combined damages by two voting machine companies (Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic) and by Dominion executive Eric Coomer.
• His election activism has hurt his pillow business, leading to significant sales declines and lawsuits from suppliers and warehouse owners who say he hasn’t paid his bills.

The judge in the Eric Coomer case says Lindell could be found guilty of actual malice, meaning he aired accusations against Coomer with “reckless disregard,” which means a guilty verdict could result in higher fines.

Attorney Sidney Powell, an outspoken conservative Christian who worked with Trump’s legal team to overturn 2020 election results, also has been sued by Smartmatic, Dominion and Coomer. Powell has settled with Coomer, but the two voting machines cases remain. She also was indicted in Georgia’s election interference case and pled guilty.

Fox News settled with Dominion but also has been sued by Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion from the conservative media empire.

Smartmatic and Dominion also have sued two smaller conservative networks that are popular with Christian conservatives — Newsmax and One America News Network — for their falsehoods. Both Newsmax and OANN have settled with Smartmatic, but the Dominion suits continue. The Dominion-Newsmax trial is scheduled for April.

Eric Coomer cases

Eric Coomer was a little-known Dominion executive until a handful of Colorado conspiracists claimed he singlehandedly turned a Trump win into a victory for Joe Biden, forcing him and his family to hide out and then relocate for their safety. He has sued a dozen parties, including Trump, Giuliani and Christian influencers who have run out of options for delaying their days in court.

• The falsehoods about Coomer began with rightwing podcaster Joe Oltmann of the Colorado group FEC (Faith, Education and Commerce). Oltmann claimed he overhead an Antifa conference call in which Coomer claimed to have turned the election for Biden. Oltmann, who never has produced any evidence, faces numerous suits and has been fined for his failures to cooperate.
• Randy Corporon, host of a radio program for Salem Media of Colorado, took Oltmann’s false claims and repeatedly aired them on his show on KNUS. Corporon’s program was canceled in June, but he and Salem Colorado face defamation suits.
• The false claims about Coomer also were picked up and promoted by Salem Media program host Eric Metaxas, who testified he did nothing to verify his false claims. Metaxas has run out of legal options and now faces a trial.
• Like Metaxas, Christian journalist Michelle Malkin circulated false rumors about Coomer and faces trial. She resigned from journalism last year.
• Coomer also sued Clay Clark and his company ThriveTime, which produces the ReAwaken America Tour rallies starring former Trump official Michael Flynn. In September, a judge allowed Coomer to bring additional charges against Clark, who allegedly has continued to defame Coomer even after being sued for defamation.

Trump already has claimed that the 2024 election is rigged against him and he declines to commit to accepting the results if he isn’t declared the winner. But the defamation cases described above may make it less likely the conservative media echo chamber that promoted Trump’s falsehoods in 2020 will do so again this year, wrote Christian attorney David French in his New York Times newsletter.

“A cascade of defamation litigation has imposed extraordinary costs on dishonest rightwing media outlets,” French wrote in a piece titled, “If He Loses, the Former President Cannot Rerun His 2020 Legal Playbook.”

“It is thus no mystery as to why rightwing media was notably restrained after the 2022 midterm elections. In spite of MAGA’s losses — and in spite of the fact that MAGA politicians were calling the outcome rigged — rightwing media largely ignored (or debunked) their fantastical claims,” he wrote. “The liability risk was simply too great to amplify Republican lies.”

Forbes published a defamation update containing additional details.

Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation is using hidden-camera videos to promote questionable and deceptive claims about noncitizen voting through its Oversight Project on “election integrity.”

 

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