Newsmax has paid $27m so far, and will pay $20m in 2026 and $20m in 2027 to technology firm Dominion Voting Systems.
The right-wing network Newsmax will pay $67m to a voting technology firm over outright false claims it made about United States President Donald Trump‘s 2020 election loss.
The settlement of the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems was announced in a filing by Newsmax on Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Under the settlement agreement, Newsmax said it had paid Dominion $27m on Friday and would pay $20m in 2026 and the final $20m in 2027.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News settled a similar defamation lawsuit with Dominion in 2023 for the larger sum of $787.5m.
The settlement came as Trump vowed in a social media post on Monday to eliminate mail-in ballots and voting machines such as those supplied by Dominion and other companies. But it was unclear how the Republican president could achieve that.
Dominion filed a defamation suit against Newsmax in 2021 over false claims that its voting technology was used to rig the 2020 US presidential election, in which Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump. Dominion sought $1.6bn in damages.
In a statement, Newsmax said it had agreed to settle because it did not believe it would receive a fair trial.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis had ruled earlier that Newsmax defamed Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems by airing false information about the company and its equipment. But Davis said he would leave it to a jury to eventually decide whether that was done with malice, and, if so, how much Dominion deserved from Newsmax in damages.
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“The pattern of judicial rulings that consistently denied Newsmax due process left the Company to believe it would not receive a fair trial,” Newsmax said. “Faced with these rulings and other constraints, Newsmax chose to settle the case.”
“Newsmax has always maintained that its reporting was not defamatory and that its coverage was consistent with accepted journalistic standards,” the company said.
“We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism,” it added.
However, internal correspondence from Newsmax officials shows they knew Trump’s claims of electoral fraud were baseless.
Davis also handled the Dominion-Fox News case, and made a similar ruling that the network repeated numerous lies by Trump’s allies about his 2020 loss despite internal communications showing Fox officials knew the claims were false.
Though Trump has insisted his fraud claims are real, there’s no evidence to prove they were, and the lawsuits in the Fox and Newsmax cases show how some of the president’s biggest supporters knew they were false at the time. Trump’s then-attorney general, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
Trump and his backers lost dozens of lawsuits alleging fraud, some before Trump-appointed judges. Numerous recounts, reviews and audits of the election results, including some run by Republicans, turned up no signs of significant wrongdoing or error and affirmed Biden’s win.