The defamation suit that Smartmatic had filed against One American News (OAN) has been settled in a confidential agreement. The suit was filed in 2021 as one of several defamation lawsuits filed by Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems against networks that spread false allegations that the two companies were rigging the vote to favor Biden in the 2020 election.
Last September OAN had also settled a similar lawsuit against the network filed by former Dominion executive Eric Coomer. However, Dominion itself still has an active defamation suit in the works against OAN, so it is not out of jeopardy yet. There are still numerous lawsuits from both Smartmatic and Dominion against various networks and individuals involving defamation.
In April 2022, DirecTV announced it would not be renewing it’s contract with OAN when it expired in July 2022, a significant blow to the small network. Shortly after, in August 2022, Verizon, the network’s largest carrier after DirecTV dropped them, announced it was also dropping OAN. Today, OAN is not carried by any major cable or satellite providers and is available to only a few hundred thousand households where smaller cable providers carry the network (note that being available and actually being watched are two different things).
Taking a beating in court is not new for OAN. In 2019, the network sued Rachel Maddow and MSNBC for Maddow’s statement that OAN was “literally Russian propaganda.” The court dismissed the suit and ordered OAN to reimburse Maddow and MSNBC $250,000 in lawyer and court fees.