Newsmax and Smartmatic settle 2020 US election defamation lawsuit

The voting machine company Smartmatic and the conservative outlet Newsmax have settled a closely watched defamation lawsuit days before it was set to go to trial in Delaware.

A spokesman for the Delaware courts said the case had been settled on Thursday. He did not offer additional details. The trial was set to begin in Wilmington on Monday.

The terms of the settlement are not public.

After the 2020 election, Newsmax aired several false claims about the company, whose voting machines were only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. The network repeatedly aired false claims from Trump allies that the software was widely used across the country and that it had been hacked to change votes.

Smartmatic sued Newsmax, Fox, One America News Network (OANN) and others for broadcasting their false claims. It settled the case with OANN earlier this year and the Fox case is still pending in New York.

First amendment scholars were closely watching the case and several others like it to see whether libel law can be used as an effective tool to police misinformation.

The case was set to be a kind of sequel to the defamation litigation between Dominion, another voting machine company, and Fox over 2020 election lies. That case was settled just before the trial was set to begin, with Fox agreeing to pay Dominion $787.5m. Eric Davis, the judge who oversaw the Fox case, was also overseeing the Newsmax case.