Lou Dobbs got a sudden urge for facts about his many claims that Smartmatic voting technology was part of a conspiracy to rig the election for Trump. Dobbs didn't bother to tell viewers he and Fox had been threatened with a lawsuit by Smartmatic.
December 19, 2020

Here’s what Dobbs aired last night under the pretense of “reaching out” for “insight” and “assessment” of “recent claims” about Smarmatic. Dobbs didn’t mention that he was a prime dispenser of those claims he was about to debunk. Nor did he reveal that his likely motivation was a big lawsuit threatened against Fox, its anchors, reporters and on-air guests:

DOBBS: There are lots of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software. One of the companies is Smartmatic, and we reached out to one of the leading authorities on open source software for elections, Eddie Perez, for his insight and views. Eddie is the global director of tech development at the Open Source Election Technology Institute. We asked him for his assessment of Smartmatic and recent claims about the company.

Dobbs then played a long series of questions and answers about Smartmatic with what sounded like Fox reporter Chad Pergram as the questioner.

Then, without challenge or explanation as to how Dobbs concluded otherwise, Perez told viewers he had not seen any evidence that Smartmatic’s software was used to delete, change or alter anything related to vote tabulation, that it has no connection to Dominion voting technology (which has threatened to sue former Trump campaign attorney and frequent Fox guest Sidney Powell), that its only connection to George Soros is that one executive has “some sort of relationship with one of Soros’ foundations, that no U.S. votes are tabulated in foreign countries, that Smartmatic technology was not banned in the U.S. and that it has no U.S. customers other than Los Angeles County.

According to Mediaite, Fox News anchors Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo will air similar fact checks this weekend.

Just as important is an explanation as to how Fox allowed these falsehoods to be repeatedly aired on its networks in the first place.

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