OAN Possibly Broke Data Privacy Laws Peddling Election Lies: Smartmatic Suit
The president of the far-right network allegedly sent a spreadsheet purported to have dozens of Smartmatic employee passwords to a top Trump campaign lawyer.
Peter Zay/Getty
As One America News Network peddled baseless claims of election interference after Donald Trump’s 2020 loss to Joe Biden, the president of the far-right network allegedly sent an email to a Trump campaign lawyer with an attached spreadsheet claiming to show dozens of employee passwords from Smartmatic, the technology company Trump and his allies falsely accused of engaging in voter fraud.
By allegedly forwarding an email with purported sensitive employee information, OAN’s leadership “appear to have violated data privacy laws,” which amounts to possible “criminal activity,” according to recent court filings. The filings are part of an ongoing defamation suit by Smartmatic against OAN for falsely alleging that Smartmatic’s systems handed the 2020 election to Trump’s opponent Joe Biden.
Records do not confirm whether the information OAN’s president allegedly shared with the Trump campaign was accurate, nor how he was able to access the spreadsheet if it was.
The filings, first reported by CNN, allege that Charles Herring, the president of OAN, sent the information to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell while she and other Trump aides were attempting to breach voting systems to collect “evidence” of the false fraud.
Herring and OAN denied the accusations. Powell has already taken a plea deal in the Georgia election interference case related to her role in the stolen-election lies.
Smartmatic has brought separate defamation suits against OAN, Fox News, and other key Trump allies in multiple states, all related to their false claims that the company enabled voter fraud. OAN has already suffered as a result of its coverage, having been dropped by DirecTV in early 2022.
Separately, the network settled a different defamation suit with the former leader of Dominion Voting Systems, whom the network also falsely accused of enabling voter fraud.
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