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NEW YORK (AP): An electoral systems worker forced into hiding by death threats has filed a defamation lawsuit against the campaign of President Donald Trump, two of his lawyers, and some media figures and conservative outlets.
Eric Coomer, chief security officer for Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, said he wants his life back after being named to bogus charges as a key player in “rigging” the election of President-elect Joe Biden. There has been no evidence that the election was rigged.
Her lawsuit, filed Tuesday in district court in Denver County, Colorado, names the Trump campaign, attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, Gateway Pundit website, conservative activist from Colorado Joseph Oltmann and the conservative media Newsmax and One America News. Net.
“I have been put in the limelight by people with political and financial agendas, but at heart I am a private person,” Coomer said in a statement.
“While I intend to do everything I can to regain my old lifestyle, I have few illusions about it,” he said. “And so, today, I trust the legal process, which has already exposed the truth of the 2020 Presidential Elections.”
Dominion, which provided vote-counting teams to several states, has denied allegations that it changed Trump’s votes in favor of Biden, and no evidence has emerged to support those charges.
Dominion and another voting technology company, Smartmatic, have started fighting against being named in unfounded conspiracy theories. After legal threats were made, Fox News Channel and Newsmax have in recent days broadcast retractions of some claims made on their networks.
There were no immediate comments from those named in the lawsuit.
His lawyers said Coomer has become “the face of false claims.” Coomer’s name was first exposed to the public on a podcast by Oltmann, who claimed to have heard a strategy call from Antifa activists. When the prospect of a Trump victory was raised, Oltmann said that a man identified as “Eric from Dominion” allegedly said “don” Don’t worry about the election, Trump is not going to win. I made sure … of that, “he added an expletive.
In an opinion piece written for the Denver Post, Coomer wrote that he has no connections to Antifa, was never on any calls and that the idea of any recording of him is “totally made up.”
Fact-checking website Snopes said that Oltmann has not cooperated in any attempt to verify his claims.
Oltmann also claimed that Coomer made anti-Trump comments on Facebook. The lawsuit acknowledged that Coomer made critical comments to the president on his private Facebook page; now it says your page is down.
Oltmann’s charges were extended after Malkin and Gateway Pundit interviewed him. Eric Trump tweeted about them. OANN and her White House correspondent Chanel Rion reported on them. Powell, misidentifying Coomer as a Smartmatic worker, told a news conference that “social media is full of hatred” for Trump, then repeated his charges in a Newsmax interview.
Giuliani, at a press conference, called Coomer “a vicious, vicious man. He wrote horrible things about the president … He’s completely warped,” according to the lawsuit.
Fox News Channel, another network popular with Trump supporters, is not being sued and Coomer is using Fox’s Tucker Carlson to support his case. The lawsuit notes that Powell’s scheduled appearance on Carlson’s show did not happen after she was unable to provide evidence of her charges.
Coomer told The Associated Press earlier this month that right-wing websites posted his photo, home address and details about his family. The death threats began almost immediately.
He said his father, an army veteran, received a handwritten letter asking, “How does it feel to have a traitorous son?”
“It’s scary,” Coomer said. “I have worked in international elections in all kinds of countries that come out of conflict where electoral violence is real and people are being killed by it. And I feel like we are on the edge of that.” – AP
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