January 25, 2021

John Berman broke the news about the $1.3 billion lawsuit, and asked CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, "How strong does this case look to you?"

Honig said it looked "pretty strong."

"If you are the Dominion Voting Systems here, you have to prove two things. One, the statements that the defendant here, Rudy Guiliani, made were false. I mean, they should have very little problem proving that. These statements Rudy Guiliani made were not just false, they were wild. The second thing you have to prove is that the defendant Rudy knew they were false or reckless. Meaning, he should have known, could have known, said them anyway. Those are the requirements. Given the obvious falsity, I think Dominion will have a real shot to prove its case here."

Berman said a Dominion lawyer points out Guiliani never made the Dominion claims in a court of law, when he would have been under oath. "He only made them in public or testifying when he wasn't under oath. Why does that matter here to the point you were just making?"

Honig said it was a good point. "It goes to Rudy's knowledge if these were false. If he believed them, he would have said that in law, the risk as a lawyer is you can get sanctioned by the court. Get fined, thrown out of the bar even. So I think that's a good indicator. Another interesting detail here, Rudy didn't just say something once. Sometimes one statement that a person says, you can argue well, maybe they misspoke a little bit or were misunderstood. Rudy made the statement Dominion complains about here dozens of times, 50 times. It's harder to run away from that."

"Dominion writes, after we asked him to stop his claims, he said he would 'love' discovery. We are here to remind him, discovery is a two-way street," Berman said.

"I see a bluff called there. Discovery is when the parties exchange information here. Rudy was puffing up, saying 'I can't wait to get the information from you, Dominion, it will prove my wild theories about Venezuela.' Dominion is saying, 'Bring it on.' They're pretty confident that there is no information. On the flip side, they will see what information, what texts, what e-mails Rudy Guiliani has been involved in saying, which I think can only further strengthen their case."

Berman asked if Honig saw the case going to settlement.

"So the vast majority of these cases settle. It's costly and risky to go to trial," Honig said.

"I'm not sure Dominion will be in a settling mood here, given they have serious damage done to their reputation. I'm not sure Rudy Guiliani will be able to settle for the amount of money that I think Dominion will require. This one, I put this in the small category of cases I think have a real shot to end up at trial."
okay, joining us now, we have senior former republican charlie dent and cnn political

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