Dominion lawyer: We haven’t ruled out suing Trump, other media outlets

A lawyer for Dominion Voting Systems said Monday that the voting systems company has not ruled out pursuing lawsuits against former President Trump and other media outlets after filing a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News. 

Attorney Tom Clare told the “Axios Re:Cap” podcast that Dominion is “following the evidence where it goes,” noting it would be a “reasonable assumption” that more charges could come once discovery begins and the team has access to more documents. 

“We’re gonna have a chance to really peek behind the curtain of understanding the people’s roles, and that would include the president and the White House and the campaign,” Clare said. “And if the evidence leads us to believe that we’ve got strong claims, that’s something we’re gonna take a look at.” 

Dominion’s lawyer noted that discovery will last “several years” but said he doesn’t think “we’re going to wait that long to make some of these determinations.”

“But once we feel like we got enough evidence, whether it’s the president or other individuals, we’re going to proceed expeditiously,” he said. 

Dominion has filed four defamation lawsuits, including one against Fox News on Friday, alleging the defendants promoted unfounded allegations that Dominion’s voting machines switched votes for Trump to votes for President Biden in the 2020 election. 

The other suits were filed against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, with all three requesting $1.3 billion in damages. 

Clare confirmed on the podcast that Dominion is considering filing lawsuits against other media outlets that the company said helped advance the debunked conspiracy theory. He did not specifically identify any of these media outlets but said it was a “fair assumption” lawsuits against media outlets were coming. 

“We’re looking at other media outlets, and making sure we can meet all of the elements of defamation,” he said. “There were other outlets that played a similar role to Fox in spreading these lies. I expect that we’re going to be holding them accountable as well.”

Smartmatic, another voting systems company accused without evidence of interfering in the 2020 election, named Fox News as well as specific hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro in their lawsuit.

Fox News filed a motion to dismiss the $2.7 billion lawsuit last month calling it”meritless,” citing the First Amendment and saying the suit “fails to allege that Fox published the challenged statements with actual malice.”

Clare told Axios that Dominion hasn’t ruled out suing specific Fox News hosts but said he considered Fox News to be “the entity with the megaphone.”

Fox News responded to Dominion’s lawsuit last week in a statement to The Hill that said it was “proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.”

Updated at 10:11 a.m.