NEW YORK — Fox News can get access to some internal documents at the voting-technology company Smartmatic as part of its effort to defend itself against a $2.7 billion civil defamation lawsuit over its coverage of claims of voting fraud during the 2020 presidential election, a New York appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The documents concern a U.S. corruption case about Smartmatic's dealings in the Philippines.
The opinion reversed a lower-court judge's repeated denials of Fox requests to peer into the company's records about the federal inquiry, which led to criminal charges against Smartmatic co-founder Roger Piñate and two other executives.
Smartmatic says the suit is a world away from the criminal case, which alleges the executives conspired to pay over $1 million in bribes to a Filipino official between 2015 and 2018 to secure business there.
Piñate and at least one co-defendant have pleaded not guilty. It's unclear from court records whether the third executive has entered a plea or has an attorney who can comment on the charges. Smartmatic itself isn't charged and put the defendants on leave.
Florida-based Smartmatic says its business was decimated when Fox aired false claims that the election-tech company helped rig the 2020 voting. Under pressure from Smartmatic, Fox eventually interviewed an election technology expert who refuted the allegations.
The network says it simply reported on newsworthy allegations made by President Donald Trump and his allies, and that Smartmatic is vastly overstating its purported losses.
A five-judge state Appellate Division panel said Fox can get some documents about how the Philippines corruption indictment affected Smartmatic's business, reasoning that the information is ''plainly relevant to its current and future lost profits."
