CNN’s Don Lemon Asks Smartmatic Lawyer Point-Blank: ‘Would You Walk Away’ If Fox News Won’t Retract and Apologize?
CNN anchor Don Lemon asked Smartmatic lead counsel Erik Connolly point-blank whether the company will “walk away” from any settlement that doesn’t include an apology and retraction from Fox News.
Fox News agreed to a settlement this week that included a $787.5 million payout in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit that was just about to play out in a weeks-long trial after volumes of damaging revelations were publicized pretrial.
The settlement has drawn criticism because it also included a tepid and conspicuously non-apologetic “acknowledgment” of “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” and did not require an apology or retraction.
Next up for Fox is the $2.7 billion Smartmatic lawsuit, in which Connolly has already said he will demand a full retraction and apology from Fox.
On Friday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Lemon interviewed Connolly and put a much finer point on that demand, asking if the company will walk away from a huge settlement if the demand is not met:
DON LEMON: In the Dominion settlement with Fox, there was no requirement for Fox to make an apology, nor a retraction. Would you walk away from an offer from Fox if it didn’t include an on air retraction or apology? Because, as I understand, you told my colleague Jake Tapper you want a retraction and you want an apology, would you walk away from an offer that didn’t include those?
ERIK CONNOLLY: Whatever you think about a settlement, if that’s where these kinds of cases go, you have to think about whether the company is going to be in this business for the long term. Smartmatic is in this business for the long term. Their reputation has been injured. And if you don’t have a retraction, if you don’t have an apology, it is so much more difficult for them to get back to where they were previously. They don’t want to exit the election business. This is what they’ve spent their lives doing. So I think when you’re talking about a settlement, if you go down that road, I think you need to have something in there that will help them publicly get back the messaging that they want it to be on, which is we are the company you go to for secure, accurate and reliable voting.
DON LEMON: And if there is a settlement, you would get to decide in some way what a retraction or an apology would look like on air. What would that look like to you at this point?
ERIK CONNOLLY: It’s too soon for me to tell what that would look like. That would be part of any negotiations we do and we’re not close to that.
Fox News issued the following statement on the Smartmatic suit: “We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025. As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”
Watch above via CNN This Morning.
