OAN and Newsmax sued for $1.6bn over election conspiracy theories

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against right-wing cable networks Newsmax and One America News Network along with its owners and two on-air personalities after publishing “false and manufactured stories about election fraud” during and after 2020 elections, according to the filings.

The networks “have knowingly and continuously sold the false story of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, with Dominion cast as the villain, severely injuring Dominion in the process,” Dominion legal counsel Stephen Shackelford said in a statement on 10 August.

Also named in the complaints are OAN owners Robert Herring and Charles Herring, leading election conspiracy theorist and financier Patrick Byrne, and OAN personalities Chanel Rion and Christina Bobb.