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WASHINGTON (AP) Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, arguing the cable news giant, in an effort to boost faltering ratings, falsely claimed that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election.

The lawsuit is part of a growing body of legal action filed by the voting company and other targets of misleading, false and bizarre claims spread by President Donald Trump and his allies in the aftermath of Trumps election loss to Joe Biden. Those claims helped spur on rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent siege that left five people dead, including a police officer. The siege led to Trumps historic second impeachment.

Dominion argues that Fox News, which amplified inaccurate assertions that Dominion altered votes, sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The Associated Press.

The truth matters. Lies have consequences, the lawsuit said. ... If this case does not rise to the level of defamation by a broadcaster, then nothing does.

Even before Dominions lawsuit on Friday, Fox News had already filed four motions to dismiss other legal action against its coverage. And anchor Eric Shawn interviewed a Dominion spokesperson on air in November.

Fox News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and we will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court, it said in a statement on Friday.

There was no known widespread fraud in the 2020 election, a fact that a range of election officials across the country and even Trumps attorney general, William Barr have confirmed. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states crucial to Bidens victory, also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies were dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which has three Trump-nominated justices.

Still, some Fox News employees elevated false charges that Dominion had changed votes through algorithms in its voting machines that had been created in Venezuela to rig elections for the late dictator Hugo Chavez. On-air personalities brought on Trump allies Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who spread the claims, and then amplified those claims on Fox News massive social media platforms.

Dominion said in the lawsuit that it tried repeatedly to set the record straight but was ignored by Fox News.

The company argues that Fox News, a network that features several pro-Trump personalities, pushed the false claims to explain away the former presidents loss. The cable giant lost viewers after the election and was seen by Trump and some supporters as not being supportive enough of the Republican.

Attorneys for Dominion said Fox News behavior differs greatly from that of other media outlets that reported on the claims.

This was a conscious, knowing business decision to endorse and repeat and broadcast these lies in order to keep its viewership, said attorney Justin Nelson, of Susman Godfrey.

Though Dominion serves 28 states, until the 2020 election it had been largely unknown outside the election community. It is now widely targeted in conservative circles, seen by millions of people as one of the main villains in a fictional tale in which Democrats nationwide conspired to steal votes from Trump, the lawsuit said.

Dominions employees, from its software engineers to its founder, have been harassed. Some received death threats. And the company has suffered enormous and irreparable economic harm, lawyers said.

One employee, Eric Coomer, told the AP he had to go into hiding over death threats because of the false claims. He has sued the Trump campaign, conservative media columnists and conservative media outlets Newsmax and One America News Network.

Dominion has also sued Giuliani, Powell and the CEO of Minnesota-based MyPillow over the claims. A rival technology company, Smartmatic USA, also sued Fox News over election claims for a similar sum of money. Unlike Dominion, Smartmatics participation in the 2020 election was restricted to Los Angeles County. Fox News has moved to dismiss the Smartmatic suit.

Dominion lawyers said they have not yet filed lawsuits against specific media personalities at Fox News but the door remains open. Some at Fox News knew the claims were false but their comments were drowned out, lawyers said.

The buck stops with Fox on this, attorney Stephen Shackelford said. Fox chose to put this on all of its many platforms. They rebroadcast, republished it on social media and other places.

The suit was filed in Delaware, where both companies are incorporated, though Fox News is headquartered in New York and Dominion is based in Denver.

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Dominion Voting sues Fox for $1.6B over 2020 election claims - The Associated Press

Donald Trumps planned social media platform will debut in three to four months, the former presidents one-time campaign manager and senior adviser said.

Were going to have a platform where the presidents message of America First is going to be able to be put out to everybody, Corey Lewandowski said on the conservative Newsmax TV networks Saturday Agenda.

Therell be an opportunity for other people to weigh in and communicate in a free format without fear of reprisal or being canceled, he said.

Lewandowskis comments followed ones from Trump, who said on a March 22 podcast that after being banned from Twitter and other major social-media platforms, hes working on his own and would have more details soon.

Im doing things having to do with putting our own platform out there that youll be hearing about soon, Trump said in an interview for Fox News contributor Lisa Boothes podcast The Truth.

A week ago, Trump adviser Jason Miller said Trump would return to social media in about two to three months.

Trump picked Lewandowski to run a super PAC as part of his forthcoming post-presidential political efforts, Politico reported in February.

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Trump ally says social media site is coming in three to four months - The Boston Globe

UPMC on Friday said it has given monoclonal antibody treatment to about 1,000 people, preventing death or even hospitalization for about 70 percent.

UPMC portrayed the results as a major breakthrough in COVID-19 treatment and one that, along with vaccine, can prevent a repeat of COVID-19 surges and high death rates of the past.

Moreover, UPMC said the treatment is available at 16 of its locations, including UPMC Pinnacle hospitals in the Harrisburg region.

I would advise most patients to get monoclonal antibody treatment if they qualify, said Erin McCreary, a UPMC infectious disease pharmacist.

McCreary said UPMC plans to eventually detail its results in a peer-reviewed article. However, because the results represent a transformative and life-saving development, UPMC chose to publicize the results on Friday, she said.

Monoclonal antibody treatment is a one-time treatment given intravenously. According to McCreary, it involves copies of antibodies which seek out the COVID-19 virus and prevent it from infecting the cells and reproducing.

Essentially, were giving your immune system a leg up on the virus before it can take hold and wreak havoc, she said.

McCreary said side effects have been minimal, and she knows of no UPMC patients who had to be hospitalized because of reaction to the treatment. Three versions of monoclonal antibody treatment are available under emergency use approval from the federal government.

UPMC doctors said the treatment was given to President Donald Trump in October, when Trump made a seemingly miraculous recovering after coming down with COVID-19. UPMC had no role in treating Trump.

UPMC said it has found the treatment works best if given within 10 days of a positive COVID-19 test and, ideally, within four days of the onset of mild symptoms.

Its available to people at highest risk of becoming severely ill from COVID-19, including people 65 and older and younger patients who are obese or have conditions such diabetes or heart, lung or kidney disease.

About one-third of UPMC COVID-19 patients qualify. However, UPMC doctors said Friday they will advocate for expanding eligibility.

They further said they are surprised monoclonal antibody treatment isnt being used more widely. In fact, they said, because of expanded demand, they devised a lottery system to determine who would receive it, to ensure people dont use favored status and connections to get it. They havent had to use the lottery.

They urged people with COVID-19 symptoms to ask their doctors about getting the treatment.

They said costs are covered by the federal government or private insurance and cost shouldnt be a barrier for anyone.

They further said the monoclonal antibody treatment is being adjusted to involve more than one antibody. UPMC is studying the revised versions to determine if they are more effective against variant strains of COVID-19, which werent present when the original version was developed.

The UPMC doctors said the treatment is available in UPMC emergency rooms and also can be given at nursing homes or even at someones home.

After Trump tested positive and began feeling severely ill on a Friday in October, he was given monoclonal antibody therapy at the White House before he was taken to the hospital by helicopter. At one point his blood oxygen level had dropped to the point he was given supplemental oxygen.

At the hospital, he was also given an antiviral medication and a steroid. After being flown to the hospital on a Friday, he walked out on the following Monday.

Read more:
UPMC cites dramatic results with COVID-19 treatment received by Trump - PennLive

Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Sometime in the coming weeks, Facebook Inc.s new Oversight Board will announce whether Donald Trump will be allowed to post again on Facebook and Instagram. Based on its recent rulings in other cases, the board seems poised to end Facebooks suspension of Trump, which began in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Trumps return to social media would bolster his attempt to remain the dominant figure in the Republican Party. More broadly, it could reshape the way political speech is governed for Facebooks 2.8 billion users, making it more difficult for the company to remove harmful content and bad actors. A pro-Trump decision could also influence other platforms, including Twitter, which permanently banned the former president after the ransacking of the Capitol, and YouTube, which said on March 4 that it would end its suspension of Trump when the risk of political violence recedes.

Facebook Inc. had ample reason to separate Trump from his 35 million followers on its namesake website, plus 24 million on Instagram. Over a period of months, he used a range of social media platforms to undermine public confidence in the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Then, having drawn thousands of followers to Washington, D.C,. in January for what he promised would be a wild protest, he directed the crowd to march on the Capitol, where Congress was formally counting electoral votes. Five people died in the ensuing attack, and 140 police officers were injured. Explaining its decision to suspend Trump indefinitely, Facebook said it sought to prevent use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.

A view of Trumps Facebook page on Jan. 7.

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

But then the company referred the Trump suspension to its Oversight Board, a quasi-judicial body that it set up last year to review content moderation decisions and issue rulings the company promises to follow. The board is made up of 20 globally diverse academics, lawyers, and civic leaders, as well as a former prime minister of Denmark and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. While the board hasnt been shy about second-guessing Facebook, overturning the companys decisions in five out of the six cases decided so far, that top-line number can be misleading. The board has jurisdiction only over Facebooks decisions to remove content, meaning its usually decided to restore it. At least for now, the board isnt allowed to review instances where Facebook has allowed potentially harmful materialsuch as incitement, hate speech, or disinformationto remain on its platform.

Some observers have argued that Facebook designed the Oversight Board as a clever sham that would allow it to keep controversial content on the platform. Such content drives user engagement, which, in turn, maximizes ad revenue. That seems overstated. The relatively tiny number of cases the board is likely to decide probably wont have a meaningful effect on the overall supply of engagement bait. Moreover, while Facebook has vowed to obey board rulings in particular cases, the company is not obliged to apply the principles the board enunciates to millions of similar cases. Rather than a sham, the oversight body appears to reflect an impulse to outsource responsibility for content moderationto have someone else make tough calls, at least in a handful of especially sensitive cases, like, say, the deplatforming of a former president.

Facebook management tends to outsource decisions about which posts stay up. The company sends the vast majority of its front-line human content moderation work to third-party vendors who employ relatively inexpensive local labor in places including the Philippines and India.

In an interview with Kate Klonick for a definitive New Yorker piece on the founding of the Oversight Board, Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the body wasnt designed to deflect responsibility. Im not setting this up to take pressure off me or the company in the near term, he said. The reason that Im doing this is that I think, over the long term, if we build up a structure that people can trust, then that can help create legitimacy and create real oversight.

The analytical approach the Oversight Board has taken favors the restoration of Trumps account. As a corporation, Facebook isnt, strictly speaking, constrained by the First Amendment, which limits government restrictions on speech. But in some of its initial rulings, the board has skeptically scrutinized Facebooks own community standards, stressing the ambiguity of the rules under which the company has removed content. Its also tended to frame the factual context of the disputed posts in a narrow way, an approach that can minimize the potential harm the speech in question could cause. If carried over to the Trump decision, these inclinations would help him.

Consider a ruling that reversed Facebooks removal of a 2020 post from Myanmar that included the assertion that there is something wrong with Muslims psychologically. Facebook took down the post under its policy against hate speech. The board acknowledged the severity of anti-Muslim animus in Myanmar but referred to this instance as a mere expression of opinion, which did not advocate hatred or intentionally incite any form of imminent harm. The board could have taken a broader view of the recent history of Myanmar. Doing so would have put more emphasis on the Myanmar militarys ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, an atrocity partly fueled by dehumanizing rhetoric spread on Facebook. The companys belated vigilance about preventing further lethal abuse of its platform in Myanmar seems warranted.

In another case, the board overturned the removal of a post from France describing the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19, a widespread claim that has been refuted by scientific evidence. Facebook took action under its rule against misinformation that risks imminent physical harm. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the company has vowed to remove claims of false cures and other medical misinformation. But the Oversight Board was dissatisfied with Facebooks inappropriately vague guidelines, concluding: A patchwork of policies found on different parts of Facebooks website make it difficult for users to understand what content is prohibited. So the misleading post about a phony cure was restored.

Which brings us back to Trump. Describing his pending case on its website, the board narrows its focus to just two posts from Jan. 6. In the first, Trump appeared in a video while the rioters were still ransacking the Capitol. We had an election that was stolen from us, he told the insurrectionists. He said they should go home but added, We love you. Youre very special. In a later written message, posted while police were securing the Capitol, he said, These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously ripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.

This framing of the case suggests the board may not consider adequately the broader context: the pattern of Trumps Facebook and Twitter pronouncements, going back months, in which he tried to erode popular faith in voting and the peaceful transfer or power. Another possible signal that should give Trump some confidence is the boards assertion in its case preview that Facebook wasnt crystal clear about which of its rules he violated. In earlier decisions, the board pointed to this kind of fuzziness to justify reversals of company sanctions.

Removing a political leader from a widely used platform should be a punishment of last resort. It narrows the scope of political debate and may deny voters valuable election-related information. In close cases, Facebook should lean toward penalties like labeling content as misleading or limiting its distribution.

To Facebook, though, Trump wasnt a close case. His social media communication, viewed in total, spread falsehoods about a rigged election and thereby created a real danger to our democracy. He praised and justified insurrectionists, even as they stalked congressional hallways, chanting that they wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence. Facebook has no obligation to amplify speech that undermines democratic governance and incites violence. But the Oversight Board, as a result of its bureaucratic imperatives and analytical approach, might yet restore Trumps Facebook and Instagram megaphones.Barrett, a former writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, is the deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, where he researches disinformation.Read next: Marketers Push Black Lives Matter But Underpay Black Influencers

Here is the original post:
Trump's Facebook Ban Will Likely Be Overturned by New Oversight Board - Bloomberg

Supporters of US President Donald Trump protest in the US Capitol Rotunda on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

A retired New York Police officer seen on surveillance video shaking a tambourine while walking around inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 with a mob of Trump supporters was arrested Tuesday morning.

Sara Carpenter, 51, is the latest in a number of former or current members of law enforcement to be charged in connection with the riot, which began with protests against the election of President Joe Biden.

Carpenter, who voluntarily surrendered Tuesday, told FBI agents in January that she went to the Capitol with others after hearing then-President Donald Trump instruct them to "march to the Capitol," according to a court filing.

The riot left five people dead, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. Two other police officers who defended the Capitol that day killed themselves on the heels of the riot, which injured nearly 140 other cops.

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Carpenter retired from the New York Police Department in 2004 after about 10 years of service. During the 1990s, she worked as a spokeswoman for the NYPD.

Detective Sophia Mason, a current spokeswoman for the Police Department, said in an email, "The NYPD worked closely with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force culminating with the arrest of Sara Carpenter."

Carpenter was ordered released by a judge on a personal recognizance bond after appearing via videoconference Tuesday in Brooklyn, New York, federal court. She faces misdemeanor charges of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

"Any involvement in the Jan. 6 [riot] is serious conduct," said assistant U.S. Attorney Josh Hafetz at that hearing.

But the prosecutor said that Carpenter's cooperation with the FBI, her voluntary surrender and other factors led prosecutors in Brooklyn and Washington to agree that a non-monetary bond would be sufficient "to ensure she will return to court and protect the safety of the community."

Under the conditions of that bond, Carpenter's travel is limited New York City or Long Island, unless it is to visit Washington for court appearances and meetings with a lawyer there for the case. She had turned over her passport when she surrendered to the FBI.

DOJ submits photo of a tambourine as part of a Statement of Facts related to former NYPD officer Sara Carpenter participating in the Capitol Riots on Jan. 6th, 2021.

Carpenter's case, along with hundreds of other criminal cases against alleged Capitol rioters, is being prosecuted in District of Columbia federal court.

The court filing says that the FBI received an anonymous tip on Jan. 7 saying that Carpenter telephoned a relative and said that she was inside the Capitol and had been tear-gassed during the invasion. The tipster gave Carpenter's home address in the borough of Queens in New York City.

Carpenter on Jan. 18 told FBI agents during an interview that she drove to Washington on Jan. 5 and the following morning "went to the rally point where Trump's Twitter page has instructed all supporters to hear about the election fraud," the filing said.

Trump, for months after the November presidential election, repeatedly and falsely claimed that he had won the election and that Biden's victory was the result of widespread ballot fraud in multiple states.

Federal and state courts have consistently rejected those allegations, as did Trump's own attorney general at the time, William Barr.

On Jan. 6, Trump, his family members and various allies held a rally outside the White House, where they again made false statements about the election and urged supporters to help them reverse the election results. Those results were due to be confirmed that day by a joint session of Congress presided over by then-Vice President Mike Pence.

According to the filing, Carpenter told FBI agents, "She heard President Trump's words on the jumbo televisions and speakers instructing people to rally back, not leave, and march to the Capitol."

"Carpenter stated that at approximately 1:00 p.m., she began to walk with a large group of people to the Capitol. Carpenter stated that she entered the Rotunda of the Capitol, where she observed other individuals walking around and leaving with items," the filing said.

"Carpenter told FBI agents that she observed police yelling for individuals to get out, then pushing and shoving the crowd. Carpenter stated she was trampled and pepper sprayed as she exited the Capitol building."

DOJ submits photos as part of a Statement of Facts, identifying Former NYPD officer Sara Carpenter (dressed in red hat, green jacket wearing a grey backpack), participating in the Capitol Riots on Jan. 6th, 2021.

Source: Department of Justice.

The filing also notes that during her interview, Carpenter said she had taken video of the Capitol building's interior with her mobile phone. She sent an FBI agent a text message containing that video footage on Jan. 19, the filing said.

Capitol closed-circuit television video shows Carpenter in a red hat, green coat and black boots, with a backpack, entering the Capitol Rotunda with a crowd, the filing said.

Before she exited the Rotunda, Carpenter is seen on video turning "back to the room and raises [her] hands in the air," the filing said.

DOJ submits photos as part of a Statement of Facts, identifying Former NYPD officer Sara Carpenter (dressed in red hat, green jacket wearing a grey backpack), participating in the Capitol Riots on Jan. 6th, 2021.

Source: Department of Justice.

"In her left hand she holds a tambourine, which she shakes several times before turning back around and exiting the Rotunda," the filing said.

A March 2 search of Carpenter's home found the items of clothing she was wearing at the Capitol that day, as well as the backpack, the filing said.

"Carpenter also voluntarily provided the tambourine she confirmed she carried inside the Capitol," the filing said.

Read more:
Ex-New York cop Sara Carpenter arrested on Capitol riot charges, told FBI she went there on Trump instructions - CNBC