Noah Feldman, Columnist

Dominion’s Libel Case Against Giuliani Will Be Hard to Prove

The voting machine company likely counts as a “public figure.”

January 25, 2021 at 8:00 PM UTC

Corrected

January 27, 2021 at 5:18 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

The election was not stolen.
Photographer: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

Dominion Voting Systems is suing Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, for libel, citing Giuliani’s false claims that the company was part of a conspiracy to steal the presidential election. The case isn’t a slam dunk, mostly because of First Amendment protections that make it hard to prove libel where public figures are concerned. But the suit is strong enough that Giuliani should hire a good lawyer — which is to say, a better one than Rudy Giuliani.

The strongest claims in Dominion’s 107-page libel complaint arise from comments Giuliani repeated on Twitter, on Lou Dobbs Tonight, and on his own radio show and podcast. In those comments, Giuliani said that Dominion was owned by another company called Smartmatic (in fact, they are unrelated competitors) and that Smartmatic was founded by Venezuelans close to former dictator Hugo Chavez in order to steal elections. On the podcast, Giuliani went a bit further, saying that Dominion had stolen the election “technologically.”