Dominion Voting Systems on Monday filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, alleging former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney defamed the voting software company with incessant lies about election fraud.
The 107-page lawsuit, first reported by The New York Times, was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and accuses Giuliani of having “manufactured and disseminated” false claims that Dominion voting machines threw out or changed votes for Trump.
This “Big Lie” of a stolen election “deceived millions of people into believing Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election,” the lawsuit alleged.
Giuliani “cashed in” on those defamatory claims by reportedly seeking $20,000 a day from the Trump campaign and hosting a podcast where he repeatedly peddled the lies, the lawsuit contended.
“Even after the United States Capitol had been stormed by rioters who had been deceived by Giuliani and his allies, Giuliani shirked responsibility for the consequences of his words and repeated the Big Lie,” the lawsuit stated.
Dominion, headquartered in Denver and Toronto, is seeking $1.3 billion in damages.
Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dominion has also taken legal actions against other Trump allies who helped the ex-president peddle outrageous and baseless conspiracy theories involving the company.
Earlier this month, Dominion sued former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell for $1.3 billion over her accusations that the company’s machines rigged the election in favor of President Joe Biden.
Dominion sent a cease and desist letter to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump confidante, ordering him to “preserve and retain all documents relating to Dominion and your smear campaign against the company” and promised “imminent” litigation.
In December, a Dominion worker filed lawsuits against several parties who pushed the stolen election lie, including Trump and conservative media outlets OAN and Newsmax, claiming the falsehoods led to death threats.
One of the lies spread by Giuliani and other Trump allies makes the demonstrably false claim that Dominion was founded in Venezuela to rig elections in favor of dictator Hugo Chávez. In fact, Dominion was founded in 2002 “in John Poulos’s basement in Toronto to help blind people vote on paper ballots,” Dominion stated in its lawsuit.
Dominion machines were used in at least 24 states during the 2020 election, including in states where Trump won.
Dozens of prominent attorneys in New York state have called for Giuliani’s censure for his role in inspiring the Jan. 6 insurrectionist mob attack against the Capitol. The chairman of the New York state Senate judiciary committee called for the state court system to disbar Giuliani.
On Thursday, a national group of lawyers filed a lengthy ethics complaint against Giuliani that alleged he knowingly lied about the election. The nonpartisan group Lawyers Defending American Democracy urged the state of New York to investigate Giuliani’s actions and suspend his law license in the meantime.