Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Celebrate the fucking wins.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

No one could have predicted…

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Ha Ha Fucking Ha

Ha Ha Fucking Ha

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Dominion just filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against America’s Mayor, Rudy 9/11.

My Monday is already looking up.

I don’t think Dominion is looking for a settlement here, and what kind of apology would Rudy have to give to undo the massive damage he’s done?  I can’t imagine it.  The only way for them to possibly reclaim their reputation (which, let’s face it, is probably completely toast) is to drag Rudy and the other Fox liars through the mud for months.  Discovery is going to be lit!

Reader Interactions

128Comments

  3. 3.

    Derelict

    Rudy: I’m a lawyer! A great lawyer! I will defend myself! What?!?!? I’m being disbarred in NY? And I’m under criminal investigation by the FBI for the insurrection?!?!?! No problem! I’ll be represented by Sidney Powell. Whatdya mean she’s also being sued by Dominion?!?!?!

     

    Not enough popcorn in the world for this!

  4. 4.

    germy

    This might mean the end for Rudy. He’s already buried under mountains of alimony.

    I remember when he forgot to turn off his phone after a conversation with a reporter, and could be heard saying “We need cash!”

  5. 5.

    Axe Diesel Palin

    Anyone have a link to the actual filing? I have a link to the Sidney Powell case, but haven’t found the new case yet.

    SIDNEY POWELL filing – https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.225699/gov.uscourts.dcd.225699.1.0_2.pdf

  6. 6.

    germy

    Fascists always look on the bright side of life:

    This is great news. In the Courts discovery process Rudy Giuliani may be able to have his expert team review the source code of Dominion Voting Systems to identify code that may have been implemented to manipulate votes. Cross examination of Dominion execs may be interesting. https://t.co/VLLxajCU69— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) January 25, 2021

  10. 10.

    Peale

    @germy: I just hope that dominion, unlike, say, every other company, doesn’t have a bunch of executives making jokes via email about their products and the stooges their critics are.

  12. 12.

    JanieM

    So what happens if there are dueling interpretations of the code, one by people who actually understand code, and another by some Giuliani crisis actors who wouldn’t know a line of code from a line of coke? Presumably not a lot of judges know how to read code………

    ETA: That was in response to @germy:’s quote.

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    I assume they’re working their way up the ladder, so to speak, and a suit against Individual One should be expected at some point? Not that he has $1.3 billion, of course. Not even if he tries to pawn Eric and Junior/

  16. 16.

    jonas

    @germy: I know — I’ve been seeing this, too. Rw Twitter is all like “Ha! Dominion totally pwned itself because during discovery all their plotting will be revealed and just wait until they depose the ghost of Hugo Chavez! It’ll be lit!”

    Somehow I don’t think it will work out that way…

  17. 17.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @JanieM: If you read the filing in the Sidney Powell case, they aren’t getting at all technical.  They’re just picking apart the obvious lies, such as the election certification being forged (it wasn’t, obvs), their claims about Dominion being from Venezuela, etc.  They can win this without going down a technology rabbit hole.

  19. 19.

    germy

    @JanieM:

    I guess Dominion would have lots of expert witnesses; folks who can explain code to the judge, and refute any wild claims Rudy’s camp might make.

  22. 22.

    JPL

    @germy: She already has a good out of jail card, so why not run.  Just admit to the FBI that you lied, and all will be forgiven.

  23. 23.

    tom

    After Dominion sued, or threatened to sue, Fox, Newsmax, and American Thinker, all of them furiously backpedaled. I don’t think Dominion will have any problems with its suit against Rudy.

  25. 25.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    It is finally going to be revealed to America just how mediocre Giuliani really is as a lawyer, a manager and a man. Plus, there’s a lot of political and personal corruption that will be manifested.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if he caps himself along the way – he knows what would happen to him when prison looms.

  26. 26.

    jonas

    I think really the only defense Giuliani, Powell, et al. have against these Dominion lawsuits is that they *really believed* the election was stolen. IOW, that they were completely delusional, so there can be no “malicious intent” behind their wild accusations. IANAL, so no idea if that will fly. But to this layman, it seems like the only gambit they have. I can also see a lot of QAnoners in court in the future for having accused some individual or business of being a satan-worshipping child predator and their excuse is “well, I really *did* believe it!!”

  28. 28.

    lexilis

    Dominion is bringing the heat not only at Guiliani and Powell but also at the lower level alt-right online media transmission belts for the big lie. The online outlet called The American Thinker (think OANN, but worse) published a number of articles by their front pagers amplifying the voting machine lies specifically accusing Dominion (you know: controlled by Venezuela, vote switching algorithms, China, etc., etc.). They has been notified they are a target for a Dominion defamation suit and are pissing in their pants.

    Get a load of this, posted 15 Jan on their site, by Thomas Lifson:

    “We received a lengthy letter from Dominion’s defamation lawyers explaining why they believe that their client has been the victim of defamatory statements.  Having considered the full import of the letter, we have agreed to their request that we publish the following statement:

    American Thinker and contributors Andrea Widburg, R.D. Wedge, Brian Tomlinson, and Peggy Ryan have published pieces on http://www.AmericanThinker.com that falsely accuse US Dominion Inc., Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (collectively “Dominion”) of conspiring to steal the November 2020 election from Donald Trump. These pieces rely on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion’s supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud on Dominion’s machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes, and other claims falsely stating that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted fraudulently.

    These statements are completely false and have no basis in fact. Industry experts and public officials alike have confirmed that Dominion conducted itself appropriately and that there is simply no evidence to support these claims.

    It was wrong for us to publish these false statements. We apologize to Dominion for all of the harm this caused them and their employees. We also apologize to our readers for abandoning 9 journalistic principles and misrepresenting Dominion’s track record and its limited role in tabulating votes for the November 2020 election. We regret this grave error. 

    The italicized statement was apparently written by Dominion’s lawyers. The American Thinker would be vaporized by even a modest defamation judgement in favor of Dominion and they know it.

  29. 29.

    germy

    President Biden is planning a new wave of executive orders and actions this week as he looks to further dismantle many of Trump's policies and address a slate of Democratic priorities as quickly as he can. https://t.co/MgZJHk6BG4— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 25, 2021

    Here’s what I don’t understand. I’ve read that tRump fucked up by making all his decisions executive orders, rather than going through a longer process. And for this reason his orders are easy to undo.

    But doesn’t that mean the next republican president can easily undo Biden’s executive orders?

  33. 33.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @SFAW:

    I’m pretty convinced there will be – he’s incredibly shifty when it comes to the movement of money, and inevitably, one or more of his “experts”, state level functionaries, vote tab witnesses or Ukrainian sources on Hunter Biden will turn out to be bribed for known false testimony, AND willing to say so.

  34. 34.

    Searcher

    @jonas: this is one of those “I don’t understand how your thought process could be so broken, that you might think that.” situations.

    If this lawsuit were good for The Cause, why wouldn’t Rudy have been the one filing it?

  36. 36.

    fancycwabs

    @germy: Not if he follows up his executive orders with legislation while democrats have control of both houses of congress. That’s* where Trump was lazy.

    __________

    *One of the many, many areas where Trump is lazy.

  37. 37.

    Wapiti

    @germy: Yes. But Biden’s executive orders are to stop immediate harm from the Traitor’s policies. Biden knows he needs to have legislation to follow up wherever Manchin will allow.

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @germy

    Expect the D majorities in Congress will take the ball so to speak, translate many of them into law and work to pass appropriate legislation.

  40. 40.

    MattF

    The fact that Giuliani continued with his smears of Dominion even after he got explicit warnings from them is just amazing. Somehow or other, he just doesn’t care.

  41. 41.

    leeleeFL

    • @germy: Yes, but getting this done, helps immediately, and we have time to get things legislated.  Sometimes, you just stop the bleeding first, then you do the major repairs.
  42. 42.

    Edmund Dantes

    @germy: they are hoping to convert them into law. EO is for here and now. Legislation to follow which is slower and you can’t always wait for.

  49. 49.

    MattF

    @germy: And cowardice. If he’d personally joined the attack on the Capitol, it could have ended up very differently. I know, the Secret Service warned him off, but ‘I couldn’t go because I was told it might be dangerous’ is the dictionary definition of cowardice.

  50. 50.

    Lyrebird

    @JanieM: Presumably not a lot of judges know how to read code………

    Based on my brief experience on Capitol Hill, I got the impression that tech or coding background is like oil to the water of studying law.

    On the other hand, enough totally conservative Republican judges have already been able to smell the manure here.  “Same code in County A: Trump won.  Same code in County B: Trump won.  Same code in County C: Biden won.” should still help.

     

    I am very happy the fashionist (remove ion) loons are excited for lots of discovery.

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @germy:

    But doesn’t that mean the next republican president can easily undo Biden’s executive orders?

    Absolutely.  But in the short term, Biden can stop the bleeding while he gets COVID under control.  Once we get the senate functional, we can start legislating.

    There is something wrong with our system when McConnell can, even temporarily, keep committee chairmanships by just refusing to come to an agreement on how things will work with the 50-50-Harris split

    edit: I see that only 15 or so people got there first.

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    Jen Rubin: 50 things that are better already under the Biden Administration

    A few are redundant, but the list could easily be twice as long

    <<13. Manners are in, bullying is out

    14. You feel calmer after hearing the president

    15. Fact-checkers are not overworked

    16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House

    17. We have seen the president’s tax records

    18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even

    19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch

    20. We have a White House staff that looks like America

    21. We have a national covid-19 plan>>

  54. 54.

    germy

    @WaterGirl:

    edit: I see that only 15 or so people got there first.

    I welcome all responses.  The part I didn’t understand was the legislating after the Executive Orders.

  55. 55.

    dm

    When Mistermix writes

    The only way for them to possibly reclaim their reputation (which, let’s face it, is probably completely toast)

    I think their reputation is only toast among people who think Trump is a courageous, selfless patriot.

  56. 56.

    Ken

    @germy: Trump’s laziness and incompetence is what saved us.

    Case in point, reported today:  Trump signed a “buy American” executive order early in his term, but no one in the administration got around to thinking about implementation until this year.

    Biden has signed a similar order and, since he knows how government works and stays interested in things after the cameras are turned off, has directed the appropriate people to start work immediately and have something in the next six months.

  58. 58.

    Barbara

    @germy: I hate to tell them but you don’t actually get to use discovery as a way to prove your claim. If the defendants don’t already have “facts” to support the claim that Dominion software was tainted, they aren’t going to be given the right to go looking for the support they need through burdensome discovery requests.

    They made very specific claims about Dominion that are simply untrue.  E.g., that it was created by some cabal that was instigated by Hugo Chavez.  That’s what they are going to have to defend against and they won’t find the answer in Dominion’s source code.

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: Another good thing: 5th VA Congressional candidate Cameron Webb is going to DC after all, to work with the White House Covid response team.

  60. 60.

    Cameron

    Seeing how quickly the fearless truthteller media of the Right folded when Dominion threatened to nuke their assets, I don’t think Sid and Rudy are going to hold out for too long.

  63. 63.

    Salty Sam

    @MattF: The fact that Giuliani continued with his smears of Dominion even after he got explicit warnings from them is just amazing. Somehow or other, he just doesn’t care.

    Interview with Michael Cohen in TPM, Cohen states “Rudy was drunk ALL of the time…”.    Might have something to do with his judgement.

  64. 64.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @germy:  EOs can only operate in the absence of legislation or to provide guidance when legislation is vague or unclear. Once legislation is in place either confirming the EO or reversing it, the EO ceases to have any legal effect. A few things come from this: 1. People concerned about dictatorial rule by EO need to get off there asses and force Congress to do its job and legislate, 2. People need to recognize that EOs are, and have always been, a temporary solution, 3. EOs do not and cannot override duly passed laws.

  66. 66.

    jonas

    @Barbara: Thanks for that explanation on discovery process. From what I’ve been seeing on legal twitter, the hurdle for Dominion will be proving “actual malice”. Can Giuliani and the others simply claim that they were so out of it/drunk/delusional, whatever, that they actually *believed* the things they said about Dominion?

  67. 67.

    patrick II

    It is not all good news on the legal front today.  The Supreme Court threw out various emoluments cases simultaneously against Trump directing lower courts to discharge the cases since Trump is no longer in office and the cases are moot.

    I know nothing about law, but that just seems ridiculous. 1. Unconstituionally steal money, 2. stall the courts until your are out of office. 3. Profit! Except, thanks to the Supreme Court, this time it works.   I have a feeling this court would have found another reason to dismiss if Trump had remained in office.

  68. 68.

    Almost Retired

    The costs of litigation alone – never mind the size of the potential verdict – are staggering; experts, complicated e-discovery, depositions, travel, inflated attorneys’ fees (which as an attorney, I am very much in favor of….) etc. and so forth.  Bwa ha ha ha.  Fucker.

  69. 69.

    rp

    @JanieM: Courts deal with complex technical issues pretty regularly. It’s the lawyer’s job to explain and simplify those issues in a way that a judge or jury can understand.

  70. 70.

    germy

    Rudy can put a stop to all this by simply saying (or tweeting, whichever he prefers) that he was wrong about dominion?   It seemed to work with the Thinker and Fox.

    Surely Rudy will do this, rather than face financial ruin.  After all, he isn’t about principles, he’s about money.

  71. 71.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jonas: The standard is “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”  They weren’t saying that Dominion were are bunch of assholes which could be a matter of opinion where as sincere belief could matter.  They made factual claims.  Or rather, and to the point, they did not.

  72. 72.

    Barbara

    @jonas: I am not a defamation law expert, but their subjective belief is irrelevant if there are no facts to support their allegations.  Based on how Powell is trying to escape bar sanctions in Michigan, I expect a barrage of mostly irrelevant technicalities about who signed which document to be blasted through various filings.  The fact that they continued making claims after Dominion put them on notice, after Georgia engaged in laborious hand recounts and audits, and so on, is going to make it easier to show that they acted with reckless disregard for the truth, which I believe is the standard. Also, they don’t get to claim whatever defense might exist for being a “delusional crackpot,” not so long as they are barred attorneys filing legal documents and making public claims about pending lawsuits.  They can’t have this both ways.

  74. 74.

    Barbara

    @germy: It’s not clear that he can do that at this point.  Perhaps that could be part of a settlement.  I doubt if Dominion actually expects to get $1.3 billion out of the defendants, jointly or severally, but obviously, that is an amount of money that would bankrupt most of those involved, even collectively.

  75. 75.

    OGLiberal

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The man got undue respect for “cleaning up” NYC, along with the 9/11 bullshit.  Dinkins expanded the NYPD hugely before Rudy and got Disney to agree to turn Times Square into Disney NYC.  He got credit for a lot of stuff he didn’t do – walking around NYC during 9/11 because the command center you built to be close to your office so you could easily meet up with your mistress was burning down and eventually collapsed isn’t a profile in courage.  The man is a monster, just like his buddy, Trump.  Ugh, could see them yucking it up at cocktail parties in Manhattan in the 80s.

  76. 76.

    Barbara

    @germy: Maybe.  A public retraction would no doubt help.  Obviously, $1.3 billion is an amount of money that would bankrupt all involved, but it would take a while to get to an enforceable judgment.

  77. 77.

    germy

    Keep the pressure up. The Houston Chronicle, El Paso Times and San Antonio Express News have all called on him to resign. Joe Manchin, so hidebound by Senate tradition that he won’t consider ending the filibuster, says he’s open to expelling Cruz!

    — Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) January 24, 2021

  80. 80.

    randy khan

    @germy:

    Ha ha ha ha ha.  Leaving aside that this is a guy who was convicted of computer fraud and is now fighting a whole slew of charges against him, the likelihood that Dominion would have sued if there were any issues at all is essentially zero.

    (Remember, too, that the Dominion machines in Georgia were vote-tabulating machines, not voting machines, and that the hand recount confirmed the totals, except for a batch of ballots that somebody had neglected to run through the tabulators.)

  81. 81.

    randy khan

    @jonas:

    The whole actual malice standard (which as others have noted, also includes reckless disregard for the truth) applies only when public figures sue.  Giuliani would have to convince a judge that Dominion, which was a pretty obscure company until this election, qualifies as a public figure.  Otherwise, it’s pretty much a question of whether the many, many public statements made by Giuliani and company were true.

  82. 82.

    Peale

    @Barbara: Hmmm. So if Guliani claims that he can’t be responsible because he is insane, does that make it more or less likely that he gets disbarred?  I do understand that powerful attorneys aren’t really ever going to be disbarred. That’s for low level attorneys and the bar does not police itself very well. But does “couldn’t possibly serve a client correctly because I’m insane” still not reach the level of admission for the profession to stop protecting him?

  83. 83.

    Barbara

    @debbie: Portman and Toomey are going to retire like John Boehner, and dollars to doughnuts they are going to spend a lot of time lobbying and entertaining and imbibing at the Metropolitan Club or similar places.  If they had any introspection they would be listening to David Byrne over and over singing “How did I get here?”

  84. 84.

    RSA

    @Barbara:

    If the defendants don’t already have “facts” to support the claim that Dominion software was tainted, they aren’t going to be given the right to go looking for the support they need through burdensome discovery requests.

    That’s what I was hoping a knowledgeable person would say. Internally developed software is often treated as intellectual property of the company, and it seems problematic to have to give that up to an opposing group, especially to disprove some claim that has no basis in truth.

  85. 85.

    Barbara

    @randy khan: For purposes of summary judgment, were I Dominion, I would stipulate that I met the standard for dismissal even if I were a public figure.  Arguing whether the defendant is a public figure gets the Ds past SJ.

  86. 86.

    randy khan

    @jonas:

    RW Twitter is filled with people who couldn’t fight their way out of an open paper bag.

    I think, actually, the best part of discovery in this case probably will be Dominion asking Giuliani for whatever evidence he had for his claims and getting back a single sheet of paper that says “None.”

  88. 88.

    randy khan

    @Barbara:

    That’s the easy route, and they likely have a pretty good case.

    The only sad thing here is that if they bankrupt Giuliani, he probably can live pretty well on speaker’s fees and the like because they’re still going to be a market for his craziness.

  89. 89.

    debbie

    @Barbara:

    Up until now, Portman’s been bleating about setting up a blue ribbon panel for election fraud. Good riddance to garbage, whatever he does later!

  90. 90.

    Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)

    I would think it’s the opposite…they really don’t want to litigate, but want some kind of public admission that the accusations were unfounded. I can’t imagine Dominion would be too eager to provide the QAnon fever swamp with discovery on their systems’ inner workings and other sensitive corporate matters. Having said that, I really hope that they’re ready to go to the mattresses on this in order to destroy Rudy.

  91. 91.

    SFAW

    @Edmund Dantes: 
    My poorly-expressed point was that it’s a civil suit, not a criminal filing, so — although I’m not a lawyer, so caveat lector — the penalty for losing the Dominion lawsuit ain’t prison.

  92. 92.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @randy khan: Yes, I think we have been going by the actual malice standard here because it is probably impossible to meet, but the correct standard (as you note) is the much worse one for the defendants of were the statements false.  And that appears to be a big yes.

  97. 97.

    catclub

    OT: Financial Scams:  ‘You have an account at the Federal reserve with your social security number’

    Back in 2017, the New York Times dove into this myth and the Federal Reserve’s attempts to combat it. Multiple Fed banks issued warnings to the public not to fall for this trick. “Any video, text, email, phone call, flyer, or website that describes how to pay bills using a Federal Reserve Bank routing number or using an account at the Federal Reserve Bank is a scam,” the Atlanta Fed warned at the time. It clarified that Federal Reserve routing numbers are for sorting and processing payments between banks — not making online payments. The Times reported that 107,000 payments totaling more than $100 million had been reversed because of the scam in just a three-month period that year.

     

    The crazy part of this:  107, 000  fake transactions INITIALLY WENT THROUGH!  WTF?

  99. 99.

    randy khan

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I think they probably don’t have much trouble with actual malice, either.  As others have pointed out, Rudy said all of these things outside of court, but in court where he would have to prove his claims he never said anything like this.  That suggests an awareness (if you can use that term for him) that there wasn’t any actual reason to think the claims were true.

  100. 100.

    jonas

    @catclub: Well, yeah, kind of like if you mail a letter with a fake/wrong address, the USPS will still pick it up, sort it, and then return it to you.

  101. 101.

    PST

    @Omnes Omnibus:Yes, I think we have been going by the actual malice standard here because it is probably impossible to meet, but the correct standard (as you note) is the much worse one for the defendants of were the statements false. And that appears to be a big yes.

    I certainly agree that the status of Dominion as a “public figure” for application of the New York Times actual malice rule is debatable. I certainly never heard of the company before all this (which I admit isn’t too relevant), and it didn’t thrust itself into a public dispute, others did the thrusting. But even if it is a public figure, actual malice may be easier to prove against lawyers like Giuliani and Powell than against journalists (or “journalists”). It is a notorious fact that they did not make their most outrageous claims in actual pleadings or affidavits submitted to the courts. They reserved these for public statements. That is objective evidence that when their asses were on the line, they had no confidence in the truth of the charges. They were recklessly indifferent to truth when they were speaking, but could not afford to be recklessly indifferent when pleading.

  102. 102.

    Peale

    @jonas: LOL. I’m now trying to imagine a requirement for letter carriers to have billions of addresses memorized so they can just stop the misaddressed letters before they enter the system.

  103. 103.

    Barbara

    @WaterGirl: Gets the defendants past summary judgment.  You get summary judgment only if you can show that there are no material facts in dispute.  The public figure status of Dominion would be a material fact in dispute.

  104. 104.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @randy khan: That’s what I meant.  I think that Rudy is toast applying actual malice – so imagine how burnt he is under the lower normal standard.

  105. 105.

    jonas

    @Johnny Gentle (famous crooner): Dominion and the other companies are in a really tough spot business-wise because even if they crush Giuliani and Powell and get these big, public retractions or even a large financial judgment, the people who swallowed their lies will never change their minds and never be placated — they’ll just claim that the “Deep State” got to them too finally and continue spinning even wilder conspiracy theories. Any time a state or local government attempts to purchase or use Dominion machines in the future, half their voters will completely lose their shit and threaten to blow everything up. Their business is ruined. They’ll probably have to end up changing their name, going into a different line of business or something.

  107. 107.

    wjs

    You can’t sue the Mayor of America!

    Rudy’s going to withhold his productivity if y’all don’t start practicing some amnesia and unity.

  108. 108.

    Just Chuck

    @PST: The only reason Dominion could be regarded as a “public figure” is because of the libel in the first place.  Surely that’s taken into account.

  109. 109.

    Haroldo

    @Barbara:

    Do you know if the public apologies demanded by Dominion (e.g., The American Thinker or Fox News) are the total requested damages of these law suits?  Or do the requested damages vary from suit to suit?  Thanks.

  110. 110.

    Barbara

    @Just Chuck: If I were defending the mayor, heaven forefend, I would argue that the subject matter — voting machines —  is a subject of public interest and the vendor’s contract with the state and/or county is a matter of public interest.  So, not that Dominion per se is a “public figure” but the selection and operation of voting machines is by definition a matter of public concern.

  111. 111.

    Barbara

    @Haroldo: I thought that the retraction was made before any lawsuit was filed, and I inferred that it was the price of not being hauled into court, but I don’t know that with certainty.

  113. 113.

    Bill Arnold

    @RSA:

    A few days later, American Thinker announced they were shutting off comments on their site. They blamed a political witch hunt on the left. Um, sure.

    Aren’t comment sections protected by Section 230? As long as that remains in force they should be protected.

    Because AT lacks the ability to monitor comments in real time, and because our position that comments are a forum, not something we publish, is being called into question, we can no longer publish comments.

  114. 114.

    The Moar You Know

    This is great news. In the Courts discovery process Rudy Giuliani may be able to have his expert team review the source code of Dominion Voting Systems to identify code that may have been implemented to manipulate votes. 

    @germy: omg SOMETHING THAT I HAVE PROFESIONAL EXPERIENCE IN!

    This will never happen.  Never.  The court could conceivably order a third part forensic examiner to do it, but “Rudy’s Team” will not be allowed within a thousand miles of Dominion’s source code nor should they be.  That shit’s a protected trade secret.  Judge’s just don’t hand that over.

    KimDotcom is FAR dumber than I thought he was.

  115. 115.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @OGLiberal:

    Attacking the Italian mob on behalf of the Russian mob was the chef’s kiss as far as his rep was concerned. He replaced a predictable set of operators who knew the importance of keeping the level of violence at a murmur and to share a bit around the community with a pack of psychopathic greedhounds.

  118. 118.

    Ruckus

    @fancycwabs:

    I agree that yes he is very lazy. Also dumb as that preverbal box of rocks. But I’d bet that he thought that an executive order was law and final. He doesn’t understand so much is part of the reason he just blunders through life. He has, in the past, enough money to protect him, and not enough to get himself into toooooo much trouble. But he’s just about at the end of his road and he went way too far, running for president, a job that he is 10000% incapable of, as we’ve seen for the last 40 yrs he’s been in office. I’d bet it was actually a lot worse than what we think it was because what we see is the surface, not how much damage he’s done to the very fabric of the government, even though we’ve seen more than enough of that. He was actually the perfect republican president, fucking up government as much as possible. He did this through incompetence as well as malice but the methodology isn’t the issue, he’s accomplished a lot of the republican goals of the last 100 yrs, in diminishing the federal government, which is why they supported him. What they haven’t been able to accomplish through politics (even as they’ve tried) he’s been able to accomplish through shear stupidity. Had he gotten another term……which he attempted to get through insurrection, another example of shear stupidity, what do you think would be the result?

  119. 119.

    citizen dave

    I want the Rudy lawsuit to go to trial so the Four Seasons Total Landscaping (hello mistermix!) and Borat 2 episodes are part of the circus.  America needs this.   Later there will be a netflix movie.

  121. 121.

    Ruckus

    @MattF:

    IANAL, obviously. But.

    Which also means he understood that acts of violence would happen, which changes his involvement to active participant.

  122. 122.

    RedDirtGirl

    @OGLiberal: Thank you for that recap of his idiocy during 9/11. I hate that everyone (not us, of course) says he’s a fucking hero for his behavior that day (and before). He also totally screwed up getting a new comms system for the FDNY prior to the attacks.

  123. 123.

    Origuy

    @Lyrebird:

    Based on my brief experience on Capitol Hill, I got the impression that tech or coding background is like oil to the water of studying law.

     
    I used to work with a lawyer who’d changed to programming. He was a pretty good coder, but the funny thing was that he wrote design specs like legal briefs, with a lot of footnotes. He’s now back to law, specializing in patents.

  124. 124.

    dm

    @Haroldo: Kara Swisher interviewed the CEO of Dominion a couple of weeks ago, after they filed their first lawsuit and asked about this.  He said the public apologies weren’t to Dominion, but to another voting-machine company that was being defamed (and willing to settle for less).

    He also said that Dominion has no plans to settle out of court.  It is important to them that the process of discovery go through, and the lack of evidence for the defendants’ claims be made clear to one and all.

  125. 125.

    Brachiator

    Coming very late to the thread

    Dominion just filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against America’s Mayor, Rudy 9/11.

    Claiming “Fake News” all the goddam time has consequences.

  128. 128.

    evodevo

    @Peale: Well….if they have the correct zip code, they will clear the system….it’s at the delivery end, where I am, that they would be stopped…the local carrier will know if that entity is there or not.  In this case, however, if the mailpiece is addressed to a company, and the address is correct, that is delivered…it becomes the addressee’s problem to sort it out….

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