The billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn has made a multi-million-dollar investment in the Smartmatic electronic voting company in part to help bolster its defamation lawsuit against Fox News over election fraud claims.
"Smartmatic built a global business by using technology to better engage citizens, regardless of party or ideology, by making voting simple and trustworthy," new investor Reid Hoffman told The Washington Post in an article Monday. "After Donald Trump lost in 2020, however, Smartmatic became a target of the defamatory campaign to overturn his defeat."
Hoffman adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn told the Post that the investment backs Hoffman's desire to "support the role of the legal system in arbitrating fact from fiction."
This was a "way to provide capital that would allow the truth to be found in the courts," he told the newspaper. "This case is a great case," brought by a "great company," he added.
In response to the investment boost and the ongoing battle with Fox, Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica boasted that the company's technology has been used to count 7 billion votes on 6 continents with "zero security breaches. Voters, candidates and election officials in all of those elections are watching to see if we still stand up for the truth against lies. Rest assured, we do," Mugica added.
Smartmatic last year sued both Fox News and Newsmax over baseless claims of vote fraud, first launched by Donald Trump. The attack, backed by no evidence and driven by politics, has harmed the company, the suit charges.
"They have no evidence to support their attacks on Smartmatic because there is no evidence. This campaign was designed to defame Smartmatic and undermine legitimately conducted elections," Mugica said when the suit was filed.
Smartmatic last month subpoenaed four Fox Corporation board members for questioning in the ongoing suit.
Another news operation that had been included in the Smartmatic suit, OAN, settled with the company earlier this year. Details of the settlement were not released.
Voting machine company Dominion last year reached a massive $787.5 million settlement in its defamation action against Fox for touting election rigging claims that executives and news stars including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity knew to be false, revealed by communications obtained by Dominion.
One Fox Corp. vice president called the vote rigging claims "MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS."
