OAN Denies CNN Story on Smartmatic Passwords Being Sent to Trump Lawyer – Times of San Diego
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Election-tech company Smartmatic, suing San Diego-based One America News’ owners over 2020 vote-rigging lies, says OAN President Charles Herring illegally shared a list of Smartmatic staff passwords.
The purported password-sharing came in an alleged email exchange with Donald Trump lawyer Sidney Powell on Jan. 8, 2021, according to court records.
On Monday, CNN was first to report that Smartmatic lawyers told a federal judge that the email suggests OAN brass “may have engaged in criminal activities” because they “appear to have violated state and federal laws regarding data privacy.”
A 1,000-word report by CNN’s Marshall Cohen said the email exchange between Herring and Powell isn’t public, but “Smartmatic revealed some of its contents in a public filing after obtaining the materials in the discovery process.”
But according to a person familiar with the case, OAN has learned that the spreadsheet of passwords was sent anonymously to as many as six other people.
OAN, the Trump-friendly network facing several major suits, never made use of the passwords, the source told Times of San Diego.
And OAN wasn’t even sure if any of those passwords were accurate, the source said.
In a statement to CNN obtained by Times of San Diego, OAN said:
OAN denies that its executive team “may have engaged in criminal activities.” This vague accusation is a clumsy attempt to smear OAN and to divert attention from Smartmatic’s own misconduct as outlined in the recently unsealed complaint filed in Miami federal court by the United States Department of Justice alleging that Smartmatic bribed an election official in the Philippines. Smartmatic subsequently lost privileges in that country as a result of the alleged bribe.
That case — USA vs. Juan Andres Donato Bautista — was filed last September and is being heard by Judge Lauren Fleischer Louis in Miami.
On Dec. 27, the government OK’d a request by OAN owner Herring Networks to unseal certain records in the Bautista case, which involves money laundering and foreign corruption.
The next day, Lous granted the unsealing order.
Smartmatic is suing Herring Networks for billions of dollars in a defamation suit in D.C. federal court similar to the one Dominion Voting Systems has pending against OAN (after winning a $787 million judgment against Fox News).
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But the Smartmatic suit — being heard by Judge Carl Nichols — is mired in a discovery dispute. In addition, OAN filed a motion to “claw back” information OAN mistakenly sent Smartmatic.
On November 20, 2023, OAN informed Smartmatic that the station’s owners “inadvertently produced” a series of privileged emails.
In that letter, OAN noted a protective order by Nichols and said: “Plaintiffs should immediately refrain from further examination or disclosure of the document and destroy it.”
But OAN lawyers last week said Smarmatic refused that request and actually used the document to support Smartmatic’s response to OAN’s motion for partial summary judgment — OAN’s effort to dismiss the case.
On Jan. 19, OAN lawyer Charles L. Babcock went on to say:
On January 17, 2023, before this Motion was filed, the Parties engaged in a meet-and-confer during which Plaintiffs’ counsel not only refused again to destroy the Inadvertent Production Material, but also insisted that OAN could not even file a motion asking Judge Nichols to impose sanctions for Plaintiffs’ past breach of the Protective Order; asserted OAN had “waived” its claim of privilege; and claimed the issue was a mere discovery dispute that OAN must request permission to brief and which could not be heard by Judge Nichols.
Discovery dispute issues are set to be heard Feb. 5 by Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya, handling that part of the case for Nichols. But a hearing on the “clawback” issue has yet to be set.
Last May, court filings said OAN had provided nearly 187,000 documents to Smartmatic in response to its federal defamation suit.
In its complaint, Smartmatic argued that its business valuation had fallen from $3 billion to $1 billion after OAN lied about the company, saying it rigged the 2020 election.
“The damage to Smartmatic from this parallel universe of lies and disinformation has reverberated across the United States and in dozens of countries around the world,” CEO Antonio Mugica said in a statement. “The global repercussions for our company cannot be overstated.”
The 197-page lawsuit added that it operated in just one county in the 2020 general election.
“Smartmatic did not play any role in the general election outside of Los Angeles County,” it said. “Smartmatic’s election technology, software, equipment and services were not used in any other county or state for the 2020 U.S. election.”
Monday’s CNN report, citing court filings Times of San Diego hasn’t seen, said the “supposed passwords were shared around the same time that Powell, her associates and other Trump supporters were trying to improperly access voting systems across the country, to prove their false claims of voter fraud.”
Smartmatic hasn’t responded yet to our queries.
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