Two of Donald Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, repeatedly pushed conspiracy theories and baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election, leading Dominion Voting Systems to sue them for defamation.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, a post widely circulated on Facebook claimed that the two lawyers had prevailed over the company, stating:
“ABSENT from the News — Dominion LOST their law suits against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.”
The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
The post is also baseless. Both cases are still active.
Since Election Day, Dominion and another voting technology company, Smartmatic, have been the subject of disinformation campaigns that seek to undermine confidence in the integrity of the vote.
Powell, a Dallas lawyer, had claimed, among other things, that voting equipment made by Dominion and Smartmatic, “were built to do this very thing, for changing the results of elections.” We rated that Pants on Fire!
Dominion, which is based in Denver and Toronto, filed separate lawsuits against Giuliani and Powell, each of which seeks $1.3 billion, in federal court in Washington, D.C. in January.
It later filed related defamation suits against Fox News and Mike Lindell, a Trump supporter and founder of the MyPillow company.
The lawsuit against Giuliani alleges that the former New York City mayor “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.”
The suit against Powell alleges that she falsely claimed that Dominion had “rigged the election, that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chávez and that Dominion bribed Georgia officials for a no-bid contract.”
Giuliani has denied defaming Dominion. Powell has argued that the suit against her should be dismissed because “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.”
Online court filings show that both cases are active.
A spokesperson for Dominion confirmed the same.
We rate the Facebook posts claiming otherwise False.
This article was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. It is republished here with permission. See the sources for these fact checks here and more of their fact checks here.
