Right-wing media company Newsmax has agreed to pay out $67 million in a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for promoting lies about the 2020 election. The announcement adds to a tally of over $900 million paid out by right-wing outlets for peddling these lies, underlining their role in spreading mass disinformation.
Newsmax, which recently became a publicly traded company, disclosed the payment in its latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission submitted on Aug. 15.
The company’s cable news channel is a lower-end version of Fox News that launched in 2011 and an outgrowth of the long-running Newsmax website and magazine. Newsmax has frequently played a role in promoting right-wing lies and misinformation while attacking Democrats including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In recent weeks Newsmax hosts have attacked federal judges for ruling against the Trump administration, likening it to the Civil War, and have referred to Social Security as a scheme to “bankrupt the United States of America.”
Dominion Voting Systems sued Newsmax over its coverage of the 2020 election, specifically citing the network’s repeated amplification of false Republican claims that electronic voting machines were somehow rigged in favor of former President Joe Biden’s campaign.
Donald Trump lost the election to Biden and repeatedly lied and alleged that the race had been stolen from him. In reality, Trump lost the popular vote and the Electoral College.
In the course of its suit, Dominion alleged that Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy played a central role in hosting conspiracy theorists like MyPillow boss Mike Lindell and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to push false narratives about the race. The suit even uncovered an email from Newsmax host Bob Sellers asking his producer, “How long are we going to have to play along with election fraud?”
The network also re-aired Fox News segments with more election misinformation.
In March, Newsmax announced that it had agreed to a $40 million settlement with Smartmatic, another voting services company that was maligned during election coverage.
The embarrassing payout come on the heels of Fox News agreeing to pay out nearly $800 million to Dominion for the right-wing outlet’s repeated airing of election lies and smears.
The payments expose how the most well-known and watched conservative media outlets have been caught eagerly promoting falsehoods to their viewers, listeners, and readers—a practice which is ongoing.
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Despite these admissions and the cost incurred by the right for lying, the sitting president and his minions continue to claim the election was stolen. On Monday, Trump invoked these lies as part of a push to further restrict voting rights and help the Republican Party win elections.
And despite Fox News’ embarrassing settlement, former host Jeanine Pirro, one of the network’s most prominent promoters of the election lies that led to the Dominion settlement, now serves as Trump’s U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and is hard at work parroting lies about crime in the capital.
Conservative politicians and sympathetic media organizations like Newsmax and Fox continue to prop each other up and lie to the public, monetary consequences be damned.