Big Lies vs. Big Lawsuits: Why Dominion Voting is suing Fox News and a host of Trump allies – By Jen Wieczner (Fortune) / April 2 2021
Conspiracy theorists accused Dominion of rigging the 2020 election. Now it wants to go to court to prove they lied—and make them pay a price for spreading misinformation.
On Dec. 9, Nicole Nollette, an executive at Dominion Voting Systems, was driving home from a doctor’s appointment when she noticed she’d missed a call from one of her customers.
The client, an elections official whose jurisdiction uses Dominion’s voting machines, had also sent her a link to a website. Nollette pulled up the site on her phone and saw her own photo—overlaid with bright red crosshairs, as though she were in the sights of a sniper’s rifle. The website, which bore the moniker “Enemies of the People,” also included an address in Nevada, showing aerial views of that property beneath Nollette’s picture. That alarmed Nollette even more, because she doesn’t live in Nevada but in Colorado, where Dominion is based. The address was for the home of her retired parents. Months later, the Navy veteran remembers the fear in her mother’s voice over the phone as her parents loaded the website: “They have a picture of the house,” her mom gasped.
Nollette was one of more than a dozen people, ranging from other Dominion employees to Trump administration officials, whose photos were posted on the website. The site accused them all of playing a role in an elaborate conspiracy to rig November’s presidential election by “flipping” votes for Donald Trump to Joe Biden—and relying on Dominion’s machines, which are in use in 28 states, to do it. Later that day, the FBI showed up on Nollette’s parents’ doorstep to alert them to the menace. Soon, Nollette herself received death threats—including one sent to her personal email address, warning, “Your days are numbered.” She still doesn’t know who sent them, though the FBI later notified Dominion and others that its intel had linked the hit list to Iran.
The threats have tapered in the months since President Trump left the White House. But Nollette, who lives alone, still watches for suspicious cars around her street. And while she once made a daily habit of taking walks before sunrise and after sunset, she now goes out only in the light of day. “This is the first time since I left the military that, at least in terms of security and threats, I’ve had to engage that military training,” she says.
