Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology company, and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani have settled the $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against the former New York mayor over spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election, according to a court filing Friday.
Dominion — one of the largest election technology companies in the United States — filed the lawsuit in January 2021, saying Giuliani’s promotion of the false theory that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against President Donald Trump had damaged Dominion’s reputation and business, led to death threats against its employees and helped foment the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 that year.
Lawyers for Dominion and Giuliani cited a “confidential settlement,” and did not disclose further details of the agreement, including any dollar figure. Giuliani could not be reached for comment late Friday.
The 2021 complaint, which was filed in federal court in D.C., cited dozens of statements Giuliani made about Dominion via social media, appearances on conservative talk shows and his own podcast to promote the “false preconceived narrative” that the election was stolen from Trump, and accusing the voting company of flipping votes to Biden in 2020.
Giuliani has been facing several financially onerous lawsuits in recent months. This month, he was ordered to pay more than $1.36 million to his former lawyers for unpaid legal fees.
In January, he settled for an undisclosed amount with two Georgia election workers after a jury ordered him to pay$148 million. Giuliani was accused of propagating a false election fraud narrative that indicated the two workers had helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump.
Giuliani was allowed to keep personal assets, including the World Series rings that were gifted to him by the Yankees when he was mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001, in the settlement.
Fox News settled with Dominion for $787.5 million in April 2023, after the election technology company sued Fox for $1.6 billion, saying that Fox had repeatedly smeared Dominion on air with fantastical claims of helping to rig a presidential election. The settlement — the largest publicly disclosed monetary settlement ever in an American defamation action — came after several pretrial rulings had strengthened Dominion’s claims.
