Voting machine company Smartmatic on Tuesday settled a defamation lawsuit with One America News Network (OANN) regarding the network's coverage of the 2020 election, according to a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The news came about a year after Fox News reached a $785 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, another voting technology company that filed a defamation lawsuit over the network's coverage of its role in the 2020 election.
No details of the settlement were released.
Smartmatic still has pending lawsuits against Fox News, Newsmax, Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell, and Rudy Giuliani.
Neither Smartmatic or OANN responded to Newsmax's request for comment.
"The case has been resolved pursuant to a confidential agreement," OANN attorney Chip Babcock told CNN.
Smartmatic attorney J. Erik Connolly told The Hill: "Smartmatic has resolved its litigation against OANN through a confidential settlement."
Smartmatic filed its lawsuit in federal court against Herring Networks, OANN's parent company, in November 2021, claiming, according to court documents, that the conservative network told its audience "that the [2020] election had been stolen and voting machines had switched votes cast for President [Donald] Trump to President [Joe] Biden. OANN knew it was not true. OANN had seen no evidence to support the assertion. But OANN chose to spread disinformation."
"In the months and weeks that followed, as other news organizations reported that government officials and election experts were confirming the security and outcome of the election, OANN told its audience that voting machines were compromised, and that the reported outcome could not be trusted," the complaint stated. "OANN knew its reporting was not true."
Smartmatic said in the lawsuit it provided election technology and services only to Los Angeles County during the 2020 election.
Smartmatic is not without controversy, however.
In March 2020, Politico reported on serious concerns over Smartmatic's technology being used in Los Angeles.
Politico noted that Smartmatic's system was found to have "numerous security flaws" with some election integrity experts calling for "barring the system" due to "multiple digital and physical vulnerabilities."
Politico also claimed critics offered concerns that "the company was founded by three engineers from Venezuela and was at one time the subject of a Treasury Department inquiry into its potential ties to the Venezuelan government."
"It also came under scrutiny in the Philippines, where authorities charged three of its employees with illegally altering code on an election server during that country's 2016 national election," Politico reported.
After the 2020 election, Trump and his surrogates made a tenuous tie-in between Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems.
Trump's team claimed that software provided by Dominion Voting Systems had been manipulated, allowing for votes to be switched.
Dominion and election officials in multiple jurisdictions denied those claims, and Trump's legal team never offered any evidence of software tampering by Dominion.
Trump's legal team also alleged that Smartmatic, which had once owned Sequoia Voting Systems, sold key assets of the company to Dominion in 2010.
Noting Smartmatic's close ties to the regimes of Venezuelan dictators Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, Trump's team alleged that Dominion's software was compromised.
The Trump team did not offer substantiation on these allegations.
Still, as the favored election company for over a decade of the brutal Chavez regime, Smartmatic has long been subject to criticism and scrutiny.
In 2006, the U.S. government began an investigation into Smartmatic's efforts to gain a footing in the U.S. market, a probe that eventually led to the company withdrawing from elections here until its reemergence in the 2020 election.
Last year, CNN reported that the Department of Justice filed charges against a top Philippine official, Andres Bautista, after he received a $4 million bribe from Smartmatic in a case that involved four of its company executives in an effort to win an election contract.
"Smartmatic has never won a project through any illegal means," a Smartmatic statement read. "Smartmatic has been in the Philippines since 2008. In every bidding process and procurement procedure, Smartmatic has adhered to Philippine procurement law and the strict controls that the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) imposes."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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