Conservative news channel Newsmax has posted an apology to an employee of Dominion Voting Systems, after it reported without evidence that he was involved in manipulating results of the 2020 US presidential election.
“On behalf of Newsmax, we would like to apologize for any harm that our reporting of the allegations against Dr. Coomer may have caused to Dr. Coomer and his family,” a statement posted to Newsmax’s website states. According to the statement, there was no substance to the allegations made about Eric Coomer, Dominion’s director of product strategy and security:
“Newsmax would like to clarify its coverage of Dr. Coomer and note that while Newsmax initially covered claims by President Trump’s lawyers, supporters and others that Dr. Coomer played a role in manipulating Dominion voting machines, Dominion voting software, and the final vote counts in the 2020 presidential election, Newsmax subsequently found no evidence that such allegations were true. Many of the states whose results were contested by the Trump campaign after the November 2020 election have conducted extensive recounts and audits, and each of these states certified the results as legal and final.”
Coomer filed a lawsuit in December against Newsmax, One America News Network, the Trump campaign, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and other people and groups that spread the false reports that Coomer had somehow rigged the election against the former president. His attorneys wrote in their complaint that Coomer had been “vilified and subjected to an onslaught of offensive messages and harassment” as a result of the false claims. Coomer was forced to go into hiding following numerous death threats, according to the complaint.
In its statement, Newsmax said that it had “found no evidence that Dr. Coomer interfered with Dominion voting machines or voting software in any way, nor that Dr. Coomer ever claimed to have done so. Nor has Newsmax found any evidence that Dr. Coomer ever participated in any conversation with members of ‘Antifa,’ nor that he was directly involved with any partisan political organization.”
According to the Associated Press, Coomer has dropped Newsmax from his lawsuit, and his attorney confirmed that Coomer had reached a settlement agreement with the network, but declined to disclose the terms.
Despite the glut of conspiracy theories, there has been no evidence there was any manipulation of November’s election results. According to a November 13th statement from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the November 3rd election “was the most secure in American history.”