The evil Venezuelan-founded voting equipment company Smartmatic is under federal criminal investigation! It’s right here in a report from that new media company Semafor! Rejoice Trump fans, until you read this: It’s for allegedly violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for bribing government officials in the Philippines for a contract to administer their elections. It has nothing to do with the 2020 election in the United States – in which the only place where Smartmatic machines were used was in Los Angeles County, California and literally nowhere else.
That said, as Semafor notes, this news could be helpful to the numerous defendants targeted by Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuits alleging reputational harm by the MAGA bullshit conspiracy theories. It would be indeed more difficult to disentangle reputational harm caused by false statements from Lou Dobbs, Newsmax, the Kraken, Mike Lindell, etc from reputational harm caused by a legitimate federal criminal investigation, even if bribing certain people is just part of the cost of trying to do business in a deeply corrupt place like the Philippines. Semafor also points out how Trump himself was a vocal opponent of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for that very reason, calling it a “horrible law” that puts US businesses at a disadvantage in other countries and reportedly quietly curtailing enforcement by his Justice Department while in office.