Newsmax chief said in 2020 'we have no evidence' e
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Wilmington, Delaware CNN — Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy knew the right-wing cable outlet had no evidence to back up its claims that Smartmatic was involved in rigging the 2020 election even as it continued to push the lies on its air, an attorney for the voting technology company alleged on Thursday.
During a key pre-trial hearing Thursday in Smartmatic’s defamation case against Newsmax, the attorney, Erik Connolly, cited several instances of employees of the cable network admitting they had no proof of the election fraud claims, including a Nov. 12, 2020 internal email from Ruddy in which he said, “We have no evidence.” “And yet they pushed the story after that date 23 more times,” Connolly said.
The attorney said that “some of the hosts were privately expressing doubt about the claims and accusations” against Smartmatic as they were being promoted on the network’s air. Several of the network’s hosts, he said, never believed them and were “joking about the accusations in their text messages” with one another.
“They did not tell their audience there is no evidence for what is being said here. ‘We have no evidence, the people on our show have no evidence. People are just talking.’ They knew that truth,” Connolly said. “They knew they had no evidence.” The internal Newsmax emails and text messages referenced by Connolly haven’t been publicly released and weren’t shown in court during Thursday’s hearing.
Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/22/media/news...index.html