The owner of San Diego-based One America News is weaponizing the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
In a 23-page motion filed Monday, Herring Networks asks a D.C. judge in the billion-dollar Smartmatic defamation case to compel a Washington-based think tank to comply with a subpoena for documents.
The Republican-controlled House panel noted that the Atlantic Council was a founding member of the Election Integrity Partnership, which it called “a consortium of ‘disinformation’ academics” that engaged in a coordinated effort with federal agencies to “launder [the federal government’s] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing the First Amendment and public scrutiny.”
In other words, the Atlantic Council was among the groups battling election denialism — Donald Trump’s widely debunked claims of a rigged 2020 presidential vote.
In fact, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab was the entity involved in the now-defunct partnership.
(It issued its final report, spanning 292 pages, in 2021.)
OAN, battling defamation suits on several fronts, says the council has failed to supply any requested documents, “even rejecting OAN’s straightforward request that Atlantic Council simply produce what it recently collected and produced to the House Judiciary Committee.”
The far-right network alleges that the council censored reporting on the 2020 U.S. election, including election reporting by OAN.
Federal Judge Carl J. Nichols, in charge of the underlying defamation case, is handing all evidence-discovery issues to Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya.
It isn’t known when she’ll rule on the OAN motion.
But the motion’s intent is clear.
“Documents produced to the House demonstrate that OAN was a victim of Atlantic Council and the EIP’s effort to deplatform views it disagreed with,” says the motion signed by John K. Edwards, part of the Herring legal team.
He added:
Egregiously, Atlantic Council and the EIP specifically sought to censor OAN’s election reporting as disinformation despite not even fact checking it. … And it has been further revealed that the EIP and the Atlantic Council used the label “disinformation” as a means of targeting reporting on the 2020 U.S. election that they subjectively considered to be “garbage” or simply did not like. … The nature and extent of Atlantic Council’s censorship efforts came to light only after the Committee exercised its subpoena powers on Atlantic Council and other EIP members.
The OAN motion says its subpoena concerning Atlantic Council’s work with the EIP “is highly relevant for many reasons,” including the House Judiciary Committee Report’s “revelation” that the EIP targeted OAN’s election reporting as “disinformation.”
“Understanding the metrics that Atlantic Council used to determine falsity or misinformation — and whether Atlantic Council improperly relied on Smartmatic’s self‐serving narrative to classify OAN’s reporting as disinformation — would therefore by highly relevant to the claims at issue in this lawsuit, including the substantial truth of the statements in question.”
OAN also says the council information is relevant to Smartmatic’s assertion of damages.
“Censoring” OAN broadcasts thus might have reduced the audience for its Smartmatic broadcasts, “which is relevant to a damages calculation, among other things,” the motion says.
“Any diminution of viewership attributable to Atlantic Council and the EIP necessarily limits the damages recoverable by Smartmatic, including damages relating to reputational harm and loss of business value and prospects, in this action.”
Asked to comment on the motion, Atlantic Council spokeswoman Miriam Smallman told Times of San Diego her group doesn’t comment on active legal matters.
Smartmatic is suing Herring Networks for billions of dollars in a defamation suit in D.C. federal court similar to the one Dominion Voting Systems has pending against OAN (after winning a $787 million judgment against Fox News).
In its complaint, Smartmatic argued that its business valuation had fallen from $3 billion to $1 billion after OAN lied about the company, saying it rigged the 2020 election.
“The damage to Smartmatic from this parallel universe of lies and disinformation has reverberated across the United States and in dozens of countries around the world,” CEO Antonio Mugica said in a statement. “The global repercussions for our company cannot be overstated.”
The House panel on weaponization of the federal government says the EIP “targeted Americans across the political spectrum, but especially conservatives. This includes candidates such as President Trump and Senator Tillis, entities such as Newsmax and the Babylon Bee, and conservative commentators such as Sean Hannity, Mollie Hemingway and Charlie Kirk.”
What was censored?
“The EIP targeted true information, jokes and political opinions,” says a House panel release.
The Election Integrity Partnership shouldn’t be confused with similar sounding groups, such as Election Integrity Project California.
A Politifact scorecard ranked Election Integrity Project California as conveying “pants on fire” falsehoods.
The Election Integrity Partnership’s final report named outlets found to be repeat spreaders of false and misleading narratives through YouTube, including what it called “hyperpartisan media outlets” such as OAN and The Gateway Pundit.
“These channels attracted millions of views for content related to known incidents of misinformation surrounding the 2020 election,” the report said.
The report noted coverage of Stop the Steal events claiming a rigged election.
“More niche right-leaning fringe outlets covered it uncritically, and at times seemingly supportively,” said the report, adding:
On One America News Network … coverage of Stop the Steal included a since-removed article outlining how voters were holding Stop the Steal rallies in multiple states because of alleged election irregularities.
The outlet had steady coverage of the movement, telling viewers how to rally and broadcasting an exclusive interview with organizers declaring that they will “Fight on.”
OAN attorneys submitted a proposed court order in which the Atlantic Council is commanded to produce documents within seven days of the date of the order.