Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani sued for US$1.3 billion over ‘big lie’ election fraud claims
- Dominion Voting Systems accuses Giuliani of defamation over his campaign to overturn Trump’s defeat in the November polls
- The US voting machine company says it has spent US$565,000 on private security to protect its employees, who are facing harassment and death threats
A US voting machine company has filed a US$1.3 billion lawsuit against former president Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, accusing him of defamation in what it called his “big lie” campaign about widespread fraud in the presidential election, court documents on Monday showed.
The company, Dominion Voting Systems, whose US operations are based in Denver, Colorado, filed an earlier lawsuit against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, whom Dominion also accused of spreading false conspiracy theories about the election that Trump lost to Joe Biden.
A senior Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, also filed a defamation lawsuit against the Trump campaign, saying he had been driven into hiding because of death threats from Trump supporters.
Giuliani said in a statement that Dominion’s lawsuit was intended to intimidate others from exercising their free speech rights.
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What appears to be hair dye runs down his face as Rudy Giuliani sweats election results
“Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for US$1.3 billion will allow me to investigate their history, finances, and practices fully and completely,” Giuliani said, adding that he may file a countersuit against the company for violating his rights.
Trump and his allies spent two months denying his election defeat, and claiming without evidence that it was the result of widespread voter fraud, before his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6.
Dominion is seeking US$1.3 billion in damages from Giuliani, the former New York mayor, alleging in the lawsuit that “he and his allies manufactured and disseminated the ‘Big Lie’, which foreseeably went viral and deceived millions of people into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election.”
Dominion said it filed the lawsuit “to set the record straight” and to “stand up for itself, its employees, and the electoral process”.
A group of prominent lawyers last week asked New York State’s judiciary to suspend Giuliani’s law licence for making false claims in post-election lawsuits and for urging Trump’s supporters at a rally in Washington to engage in “trial by combat” shortly before they stormed the Capitol.
Dominion states in its lawsuit that it has spent US$565,000 on private security to protect its employees, who are facing harassment and death threats.
“Giuliani’s statements,” the lawsuit stated, “were calculated to – and did in fact – provoke outrage and cause Dominion enormous harm.”
Founded in Canada in 2002, Dominion is a major manufacturer of voting machines, and various Dominion machines were used in more than two dozen states during the 2020 US elections.
