Tag: elections

Fox News Notches Big Win Against Smartmatic as Appeals Court Grants Access to Damning Insider Info

Fox News lawyers fighting off a defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic Voting Systems have been granted access to new ammunition.

Last week, Fox was granted access to materials connected with a 2024 federal bribery indictment concerning company co-founder and president Roger Piñate and other company executives, according to The Wrap.

The Justice Department has alleged that more than $1 million in bribes went from company executives to a Philippine official in an attempt to influence which voting machines were used in the nation’s 2016 elections, according to a Justice Department news release.

Those charged have pleaded not guilty.

Fox claimed that the charges are relevant to its defense because Smartmatic was suffering for reasons other than Fox’s coverage of the 2020 election, according to The Wrap.

“We are pleased with the Court’s ruling that materials about Smartmatic executives’ indictments are ‘plainly relevant’ to its lack of damages. The factual evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News,” Fox said in a statement.

In a separate filing calling for summary judgment in its favor, Fox argued that Smartmatic’s sales had “cratered” before the 2020 election.

Fox  sought to undercut Smartmatic’s claim that it was damaged by saying that the company’s books show “no profit record to serve as a basis for projecting millions of dollars in future profits.”

Smartmatic fired back against Fox News in a separate filing, according to CNN.

The company alleged in court documents that Fox “orchestrated the destruction of text messages across all levels of their corporate hierarchy … despite a clear duty to preserve evidence.”

Smartmatic claimed Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch “deleted their texts” in an “extensive and willful” fashion.

Fox said the allegation was a “desperate attempt to distract” from the ruling in Fox’s favor.

“Smartmatic weakly attempts to resurrect stale, baseless discovery issues that actually were disclosed by Fox and resolved two years ago,” a Fox representative said.

“These issues have no bearing on the merits of Smartmatic’s case, which has fallen apart at every turn,” the Fox representative said.

As noted by The Wrap. Smartmatic is seeking $2.7 billion from Fox.

Keep reading

Federal Judge Blocks Voter-Approved Oregon Law Requiring Marijuana Businesses To Have Labor Peace Agreements With Workers

A federal judge has struck down a voter-approved Oregon law that required licensed marijuana businesses enter into labor peace agreements with workers and mandated that employers remain neutral in discussions around unionization.

About three months after two marijuana businesses—Bubble’s Hash and Ascend Dispensary—filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon challenging the implementation of Measure 119, Judge Michael Simon on Tuesday ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, agreeing that the law unconstitutionally restricts free speech and violates the federal National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Under the now defunct law, a marijuana businesses that was unable to provide proof of a labor peace agreement could have been subject a denial or revocation of their license.

The lawsuit named Gov. Tina Kotek (D), Attorney General Dan Rayfield (D) and Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission’s (OLCC) Dennis Doherty and Craig Prins as defendants.

In the order on Tuesday, the judge walked through various components of the legal arguments from both sides and ultimately agreed that the Oregon law is preempted by the NLRA, which is meant to provide protections for workers who want to unionize—but specifically preserves the right for “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate in labor disputes.”

By mandating neutrality from employers in labor discussions, that constitutes a violation of the NLRA, the judge ruled.

“Measure 119 does not distinguish between permissible employer speech and threatening or coercive speech,” Simon said. “Measure 119 is not limited to restricting only threatening, coercive, false, or misleading speech, but instead prohibits all speech by employers that is not ‘neutral’ toward unionization.”

On the question of whether the law violates First Amendment protections under the U.S. Constitution, the cannabis companies argued that “Measure 119 is a content-based restriction on speech that is subject to strict scrutiny, and that Defendants fail to provide a compelling government interest requiring this restriction.”

Keep reading

Russia Hoaxer Marc Elias Sues Wyoming To Make It Easier For Noncitizens To Vote

Russia collusion hoaxer Marc Elias filed a lawsuit Friday challenging a new Wyoming law that makes it harder for noncitizens to register to vote.

Gov. Mark Gordon, R-Wyo., allowed House Bill 156 to become law on March 21 without his signature. The legislation requires prospective registrants to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote. Proof includes a U.S. passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers, among other options. The legislation, which passed the state House 51 to eight and the state Senate by 26 to four, is slated to go into effect on July 1, 2025.

But Elias, alongside the Equality State Policy Center and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to overturn the will of the state, alleging the legislation violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

“When HB 156 becomes effective, it will impose new, burdensome, and entirely unnecessary requirements that will make it harder for eligible citizens to vote,” the suit claims. “The result will be the exclusion and disenfranchisement of citizens.”

The suit claims, in part, that “Women — as well as Hispanic, young, and low-income voters — are less likely to have acceptable documentation and, in many cases, face greater hurdles to obtaining it.” Women, the suit contends, “are more likely than men to be turned away when they go to register as a result of HB 156,” because of name changes resulting from marriage.

Keep reading

Terrifying moment Mexican mayoral candidate is shot dead alongside three supporters including her daughter during live broadcast

A Mexican mayoral candidate was tragically shot dead alongside three of her supporters including her daughter during a live broadcast of her campaign rally.

Yesenia Lara Gutierrez, representing Mexico‘s ruling Morena party, was gunned down in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz on Sunday night as she greeted residents in the streets of Texistepec.

The horrifying incident was captured on a Facebook livestream, showing people running and screaming as gunshots rang out off camera. Mexican newspaper Reforma reported that the candidate was greeting ‘women with children in their arms’ when the gunfire began.

Footage posted online depicted the chaos, with at least 20 shots head in the clip that was still available on Gutierrez’s Facebook page the following day. Other images shared online appeared to show bodies in the street.

Veracruz Governor Rocio Nahle, also of the Morena party of President Claudia Sheinbaum, said Monday that Gutierrez’s daughter was among those killed by gunmen. 

‘No office or position is worth a person’s life,’ Nahle said in a press conference Monday, where she promised justice.  

Gutierrez had posted several images on Facebook, showing her campaigning throughout the region. ‘The strength of our youth is the vitality that motivates me to keep walking day by day,’ she wrote just hours before the shooting.

This marks the second killing of a mayoral candidate in Veracruz during the current election cycle, following the April 29 murder of German Anuar Valencia, also from Morena. 

Keep reading

Texas Indicts 5 County Officials In Voter Fraud Investigation

Six Texas residents — five of whom are current or former local Frio County officials — were indicted on Wednesday in a voter fraud probe.

“The people of Texas deserve fair and honest elections, not backroom deals and political insiders rigging the system. Elected officials who think they can cheat to stay in power will be held accountable. No one is above the law,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.

According to a Paxton press release, the six individuals are charged with allegedly engaging in illegal ballot harvesting activity. Texas law specifies that only a voter can return his absentee ballot, with limited exceptions.

Among the charged persons is Rochelle Camacho, a Frio County judge who a grand jury indicted on three counts of ballot harvesting. In addition to two Pearsall City Council members, the indictments also included former Frio County Elections Administrator Carlos Segura, who was charged with one count of “Tampering with or Fabricating Physical Evidence,” according to Paxton’s office.

The state AG’s office noted that five of the named individuals were arrested last week, “with the exception of Rochelle Camacho, who will be processed at a later date.” Five of the six suspects have “ties to Democratic candidates,” The New York Times reported.

The charges stem from a series of search warrants executed last August by Paxton’s Criminal Investigation Division. The warrants were related to what the AG’s office characterized as “a multi-year election integrity investigation into credible allegations of vote harvesting” across Frio, Atascosa, and Bexar Counties.

What’s notable about the still-ongoing probe, however, is its encompassing of individuals tied to a prominent left-wing activist group.

Keep reading

Filing: Smartmatic Hid Meeting With Dem Megadonor Who Financed Its Suit Against 2020 Election Reporting

Smartmatic, the electronic tabulator company suing Fox News for alleged defamation following the 2020 election, failed in a February court hearing to disclose a meeting with Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman, newly unsealed court documents allege.

Following the 2020 election, both Fox News and Newsmax “hosted commentators who aired concerns that tabulators were not secure, were vulnerable to voter fraud, and had possibly changed Trump votes to Biden votes,” as described in these pages by Logan Washburn. Smartmatic sued, arguing the comments amounted to defamation. Fox previously settled a suit with Dominion Voting over similar allegations while Newsmax recently settled with Smartmatic for $40 million, according to NBC.

As Washburn reported, Fox had previously expressed concerns about a “deep-pocketed ‘third party’ behind the suit” — allegations that Smartmatic denied in 2023, according to Reuters. But reporting from The Washington Post revealed Hoffman invested millions in Smartmatic, as the company sued news outlets for their reporting about the 2020 election. In July 2024, the Post reported that Hoffman had “connected with Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica through friends of friends” and was “boosting” its lawsuit against Fox.

According to a newly unsealed filing, Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica met with “politically-motivated investors … to discuss the company’s financials and investment prospects.” That’s “a fact that Smartmatic withheld from this Court on February 5, 2025,” says the document, which was initially filed under seal with the New York State Supreme Court in April before being unsealed this week.

“After that meeting, Hoffman and [his adviser Dmitri] Mehlhorn infused Smartmatic with $25,000,000 to fund its litigation against Fox and publicly declared that Smartmatic could be a ‘$400 million’ company but for the alleged defamation,” the filing continues.

A “deposition transcript from the Newsmax case confirms that Hoffman and Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica had a private meeting,” according to the document. But “Smartmatic did not tell the Court at that [Feb. 5, 2025] hearing … that Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s CEO, had met with Hoffman and Mehlhorn via videoconference about Smartmatic’s finances, this lawsuit,” and Hoffman’s funding, it says.

The filing also alleges that Smartmatic had previously “failed to disclose to Fox that … it entered into a litigation-funding agreement with … an entity controlled by Reid Hoffman,” a fact that Fox learned “from public media reports” in July 2024, “just seven days before the then-scheduled close of fact discovery.”

In a statement to The Federalist, a Fox News representative said it’s unsurprising that Hoffman would be involved.

Keep reading

Black female mayor unleashes on white voters after being booted from office

A Missouri mayor publicly criticized her white voters, accusing them of turning their backs on Black women in leadership after voting her out in favor of a new, white candidate.

Tishaura Jones, the former St. Louis mayor, suffered a staggering 28-point defeat to Mayor Cara Spencer last month, marking one of the worst losses for an existing mayor in the city’s last 50 years, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

However, the 53-year-old politician blamed her loss to racial bias amongst her voters, accusing them of booting her from office because she is Black.

‘I think St. Louis needs to have a conversation with itself about why it no longer trusts Black women to lead,’ Jones said in an interview with St. Louis Public Radio on Thursday.

‘My dad always told me – and it’s an old phrase – that Black women have to work twice as hard to get half as much,’ she added.

‘Well, I feel like we work five times as hard and get nothing in return.’

Just four years ago, voters from St. Louis’s north side and its white progressive neighborhoods rallied behind Jones, propelling her into the mayor’s office.

Fast forward to last month’s re-election, and Jones’ voter base had ultimately crumbled – white progressive neighborhoods that once championed her shifted their support to Spencer, the very candidate Jones defeated in 2021.

Explanations for the shift varied – disappointment in her activist base, missteps with grant programs, etc. 

However, voters on both the north and south sides repeatedly voiced frustration with Jones’ handling of basic city services – from trash pickup to pothole repairs – as well as her response to the massive snowstorm that hit the state in January.

What may have swayed voters was Spencer’s straightforward yet resonant promise to St. Louis: a swift return ‘back to basics’, Post-Dispatch reported.

Yet Jones believes that even her Black voter base on the north side turned away from her, claiming they held unrealistic expectations during her four years in office.

Keep reading

Pennsylvania County Sent Voters Wrong Mail Ballots For May Primary

Whoops! Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna County election office mailed last year’s ballots to 545 Republican primary voters in Scranton for the May 20, 2025 election. Voters caught the mistake and the county has now sent the correct ballot to those voters, the county said in a statement. Voters with a faulty ballot should toss it in the trash, including the envelope, the county says.

The county has an explanation for how this oddity happened, although the county did not explain how the error was not caught before printing or mailing. The 2024 primary ballot had presidential and Senate candidates—no one saw that before printing?

It is another example of the troubles that plague mail-in voting, and the control county election offices lose when they outsource the work taxpayers used to pay county workers to do to a third-party vendor.   

In Pennsylvania, primary voters must be a member of the Democrat or Republican party. Independents don’t vote. Party members get different ballots and choose which members of their party to promote to the General Election ballot.  

That is why only Republican ballots were affected. Also, a court challenge in the Scranton Republican mayoral race went past the print deadline, so Scranton Republican ballots were printed separately from the rest of the county’s.   

Election Systems and Software (ES&S), a Nebraska-based voting machine company that also prints ballots, apologized and took responsibility for the blunder, said Beth Hopkins, director of the Lackawanna Department of Elections and Voter Registration, in a statement.

“During the printing process, an employee mistakenly pulled and printed a file from the 2024 election instead of the current 2025 election,” Kristy Ericson, ES&S director of ballot management services, said in an email, according to the county. “This human error in processing the files was missed in the quality check process. ES&S reviewed all other provisional and Election Day ballots to ensure that files were printed accurately.”

Lackawanna County Republican Party Chairman Dan Naylor asked the county to provide the party a list of every Republican that was sent an erroneous mail-in ballot. The county says more than 12,000 other voters in both parties combined received accurate mail ballots.

Keep reading

With Florida Marijuana Legalization Measure Circulating, DeSantis Signs Bill Making It Harder To Qualify Ballot Initiatives

Fresh changes to Florida law on ballot initiatives will create new hurdles for advocates aiming to put legislative proposals before voters—including, potentially, the renewed effort to legalize marijuana in the state.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday signed a measure into law that tightens requirements around citizen-initiated measures. Among other requirements, it mandates that supporters post a $1 million bond before commencing signature gathering, prohibits the use of out-of-state and noncitizen petitioners and narrows the window during which which signatures must be submitted to election officials.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R), contends the ballot initiative process “has been taken over by out of state fraudsters looking to make a quick buck and by special interests intent on buying their way into our Constitution.”

“The bill seeks to root out the problem and provide assurances that only those with a stake in our Constitution can change it to that end,” she said at a hearing in March.

DeSantis, for his part, said on social media over the weekend that the bill will “combat petition fraud and prevent the special interest-abuse of our constitutional amendment process.”

Changes under the new law will also prevent Floridians with felony convictions from collecting petition signatures unless they’ve gone through the process of restoring their voting rights.

Residents will also have to provide personal details—including their driver’s license number, voter ID card number or the last four digits of their Social Security number—in order to fill out a petition. The form itself will then become a public record, raising potential privacy concerns.

Campaigns also have less time to return petitions to election officials, and they’ll face harsher fines for errors.

The new obstacles to placing a proposal on the statewide ballot come on the heels of two contentious constitutional amendments that went before voters last year, including one—Amendment 3—that would have legalized marijuana for adults 21 and older, and another on abortion rights.

Keep reading

Noncitizen Voting And Voter Fraud Schemes: DOJ Investigates Voting Crimes Across Multiple States And Elections

Within the last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges against multiple foreign nationals for illegally voting in American elections. The DOJ also revealed a foreign national pleaded guilty to conspiring in a voter registration fraud scheme.

As my colleague Beth Brelje reported, the DOJ announced Monday that 45-year-old Akeel Abdul Jamiel was charged with illegally voting in the 2020 election. Jamiel, an Iraqi, allegedly voted in the November 2020 election in Saratoga County, New York, despite not being a citizen. The U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) contributed to the investigation, the DOJ noted.

Some 1,200 miles south, 32-year-old Uzbekistan national Sanjar Jamilov pleaded guilty to “conspiring to submit fraudulent voter registrations,” the DOJ announced Tuesday. Jamilov was originally charged earlier this year, and his “sentencing date has not yet been set.”

According to a plea agreement, the DOJ explained, the scheme began when 45-year-old Russian national Dmitry Shushlebin “hired Jamilov and others to submit more than 100 fraudulent voter registration applications to the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections in February and March 2023.” The applications used names other than those of the perpetrators and “bore various indicia of fraud,” like “repeat[ed] dates of birth and addresses,” as well as “nearly sequential Social Security numbers,” according to the DOJ. The applications were rejected after a county election supervisor detected fraud.

“Dmitry Shushlebin has been charged for his alleged role in this case. The case is currently pending,” the DOJ added.

Keep reading