Conservative Website Admits Its Stories About Dominion Were ‘Completely False’ in Massive Retraction
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Right-wing online opinion website American Thinker has issued a retraction of false, unsupported, and debunked stories it published about Dominion Voting Systems and the company’s role in the 2020 presidential election.
Dominion is one of the companies that has been targeted by conspiracy theorists claiming President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election.
Friday’s online statement, posted by American Thinker editor and publisher Thomas Lifson, was notable for its careful wording, which seemed to acknowledge that it would likely lose a defamation lawsuit by Dominion, rather than sincerely taking responsibility for publishing information it knew not to be true.
“We received a lengthy letter from Dominion’s defamation lawyers explaining why they believe that their client has been the victim of defamatory statements,” Lifson wrote. “Having considered the full import of the letter, we have agreed to their request that we publish the following statement[.]”
Here is the statement in full:
American Thinker and contributors Andrea Widburg, R.D. Wedge, Brian Tomlinson, and Peggy Ryan have published pieces on www.AmericanThinker.com that falsely accuse US Dominion Inc., Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (collectively “Dominion”) of conspiring to steal the November 2020 election from Donald Trump. These pieces rely on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion’s supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud on Dominion’s machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes, and other claims falsely stating that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted fraudulently.
These statements are completely false and have no basis in fact. Industry experts and public officials alike have confirmed that Dominion conducted itself appropriately and that there is simply no evidence to support these claims.
It was wrong for us to publish these false statements. We apologize to Dominion for all of the harm this caused them and their employees. We also apologize to our readers for abandoning 9 journalistic principles and misrepresenting Dominion’s track record and its limited role in tabulating votes for the November 2020 election. We regret this grave error.
Following the 2020 presidential election, American Thinker ran multiple stories about Dominion, alleging that the company was involved in a conspiracy to overturn the election results. Unsupported claims included a report that Dominion “deleted” millions of votes for Trump, and attempts to link Dominion executives to both “antifa” and Venezuela.
The overall tone of Friday’s retraction recalls the near-identical fact checks that ran on Fox News and Fox Business in December regarding false claims made about Smartmatic, after the Florida-based voting machine company threatened litigation. Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro — along with Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell — had pushed unsupported claims that Smartmatic had changed votes for Trump to Biden, and suggested that Dominion Voting Systems was a front for Smartmatic. Newsmax also issued a fact check after repeating similar claims about Smartmatic.
