Filing: Smartmatic Hid Meeting With Dem Megadonor Who Financed Its Suit Against 2020 Election Reporting
Smartmatic, the electronic tabulator company suing Fox News for alleged defamation following the 2020 election, failed in a February court hearing to disclose a meeting with Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman, newly unsealed court documents allege.
Following the 2020 election, both Fox News and Newsmax “hosted commentators who aired concerns that tabulators were not secure, were vulnerable to voter fraud, and had possibly changed Trump votes to Biden votes,” as described in these pages by Logan Washburn. Smartmatic sued, arguing the comments amounted to defamation. Fox previously settled a suit with Dominion Voting over similar allegations while Newsmax recently settled with Smartmatic for $40 million, according to NBC.
As Washburn reported, Fox had previously expressed concerns about a “deep-pocketed ‘third party’ behind the suit” — allegations that Smartmatic denied in 2023, according to Reuters. But reporting from The Washington Post revealed Hoffman invested millions in Smartmatic, as the company sued news outlets for their reporting about the 2020 election. In July 2024, the Post reported that Hoffman had “connected with Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica through friends of friends” and was “boosting” its lawsuit against Fox.
According to a newly unsealed filing, Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica met with “politically-motivated investors … to discuss the company’s financials and investment prospects.” That’s “a fact that Smartmatic withheld from this Court on February 5, 2025,” says the document, which was initially filed under seal with the New York State Supreme Court in April before being unsealed this week.
“After that meeting, Hoffman and [his adviser Dmitri] Mehlhorn infused Smartmatic with $25,000,000 to fund its litigation against Fox and publicly declared that Smartmatic could be a ‘$400 million’ company but for the alleged defamation,” the filing continues.
A “deposition transcript from the Newsmax case confirms that Hoffman and Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica had a private meeting,” according to the document. But “Smartmatic did not tell the Court at that [Feb. 5, 2025] hearing … that Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic’s CEO, had met with Hoffman and Mehlhorn via videoconference about Smartmatic’s finances, this lawsuit,” and Hoffman’s funding, it says.
The filing also alleges that Smartmatic had previously “failed to disclose to Fox that … it entered into a litigation-funding agreement with … an entity controlled by Reid Hoffman,” a fact that Fox learned “from public media reports” in July 2024, “just seven days before the then-scheduled close of fact discovery.”
In a statement to The Federalist, a Fox News representative said it’s unsurprising that Hoffman would be involved.
“As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims against Fox News are highly implausible, disconnected from reality and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms, so their cozy alliance with a high-profile liberal activist and donor of President Biden to fund their lawsuit is entirely predictable,” the representative said.
The Federalist asked Smartmatic why it apparently hid the meeting with a Democrat billionaire megadonor and whether there were any other meetings with Hoffman or other financiers that Smartmatic failed to disclose to the court. Erik Connolly, legal counsel for Smartmatic, said: “Fox’s only strategy appears to be to pile lie upon lie in an effort to smear a victim it can no longer deny defaming. The Court never found that any information was withheld, the claim is nonsense.”
After Fox sought to depose Hoffman and Mehlhorn, a judicial hearing officer said in March that depositions were “warranted,” according to the filing. But last month, a judge ruled Fox could depose Mehlhorn but not Hoffman.
“Having inserted themselves into this suit by taking that meeting and funding Smartmatic, [Hoffman and Mehlhorn] should not now be permitted to withhold material and necessary information they possess,” the filing states.
Mehlhorn previously indicated to The Washington Post that both he and Hoffman viewed “the court system” as an “important part of the battle to protect America from MAGA.”
Notably, a federal grand jury indicted Smartmatic executives in August of 2024 for allegedly participating in a “bribery and money laundering scheme,” as Washburn previously reported. The indictment targeted “three executives” of an “election voting machine” company and listed Roger Piñate and Jorge Vásquez, although the Department of Justice did not mention Smartmatic by name. Piñate was president and co-founder of Smartmatic, while Vásquez worked there as an executive.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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