In a motion filed in their long-running defamation case against OAN for bullshit conspiracy theories aired after the 2020 election, lawyers for voting tech company Smartmatic alleged that executives at the low-budget far right propaganda network “may have engaged in criminal activities” and “appear to have violated state and federal laws regarding data privacy” on January 8, 2021 when OAN President Charles Herring emailed fellow defamation defendant MAGA lawyer Sidney “Kraken” Powell a spreadsheet listing usernames and passwords of Smartmatic employees, CNN reports.
“OAN denies that its executive team ‘may have engaged in criminal activities.’ This vague accusation is a clumsy attempt to smear OAN and to divert attention from Smartmatic’s own misconduct,” said OAN lawyer Charles Babcock in a statement to CNN, referring to that little issue the company is facing with a bribery scandal in the Philippines, something that might be a little more valid of a counterpunch if maybe OAN hadn’t already settled with former Dominion exec Eric Coomer.