Newsmax, the conservative cable news channel, has agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a high-profile defamation lawsuit. The suit stemmed from Newsmax’s repeated airing of false claims that Dominion’s technology helped rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The settlement, finalized on August 15, 2025, and revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing made public on August 18, brings another chapter of the post-2020 election misinformation saga to a costly close.
According to the SEC filing, Newsmax will pay the $67 million in three installments: $27 million immediately on August 15, 2025, followed by $20 million by January 15, 2026, and another $20 million by January 15, 2027. The deal was confirmed by both parties, with Dominion stating to CNN, “We are pleased to have settled this matter.” Newsmax, for its part, has not issued any apology or on-air acknowledgment of its role in spreading the baseless conspiracy theories, instead maintaining that its coverage was “fair [and] balanced.”
The roots of the lawsuit stretch back to August 2021, when Dominion filed its complaint in the wake of Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election. In the months after the election, Trump and his allies, including several Newsmax guests and on-air personalities, promoted the unfounded narrative that the election had been stolen. Dominion, a leading voting hardware and software company, quickly became a primary target for these conspiracy theories—accused, without evidence, of manipulating votes, aiding election fraud, maintaining ties to Venezuela, and even paying kickbacks to officials.
These allegations were not only repeated on Newsmax’s broadcasts but also published on the network’s website. According to court documents cited by Reuters, the Delaware Superior Court found these statements to be defamatory per se—a legal classification reserved for false statements so inherently damaging that harm to the plaintiff’s reputation is presumed, without the need for proof of specific monetary loss. Typically, defamation per se includes accusations of serious crime, professional misconduct, or other grave offenses. In this case, the court concluded that Newsmax’s statements met that threshold.
Judge Eric M. Davis, presiding over the case, ruled in April 2025 that Newsmax’s statements about Dominion were “false and defamatory as a matter of law,” leaving only the questions of actual malice and damages for a jury to decide. However, the trial scheduled for April was postponed due to a professional matter unrelated to the case. Before the trial could be rescheduled, the two parties reached a settlement, rendering the unresolved questions moot.
The Newsmax settlement is only the latest—and by no means the largest—resulting from lawsuits over false claims about the 2020 election. In April 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion a staggering $787.5 million to settle a similar defamation case. That payout, as reported by Reuters and CNN, sent shockwaves through the media industry and weighed heavily on Fox Corporation’s quarterly earnings. Fox News’s ratings dwarf those of Newsmax, but even so, the $67 million Newsmax settlement is significant for a much smaller network.
Last fall, Newsmax quietly settled another defamation suit with Smartmatic, another voting technology company targeted by election conspiracy theories, for $40 million. Meanwhile, Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation case against Fox News is still winding its way through New York state court, with both sides currently trading summary-judgment motions and the matter heading toward trial unless a settlement is reached.
The Newsmax-Dominion settlement marks a rare moment of accountability in the ongoing legal fallout from the 2020 election. Dominion’s claims were not just about reputational harm—they were about the broader damage inflicted on public trust in U.S. elections by the persistent spread of misinformation. Although Newsmax did not admit wrongdoing or apologize, the financial penalty speaks volumes. As CNN noted, “egregious lies about the 2020 presidential election are going to cost Newsmax $67 million.”
Yet some observers have noted the lack of public contrition on the part of Newsmax. Unlike some settlements that include public apologies or corrective statements, this agreement contains no such provision. Newsmax has continued to assert that its coverage was “fair [and] balanced,” and has not indicated any plans to issue an on-air apology or acknowledgment of the false claims. Dominion, for its part, has kept its comments brief, simply stating satisfaction with the resolution.
The broader context for these settlements is the ongoing legal and political reckoning over the 2020 election. Nearly five years after the pro-Trump campaign to overturn the results, lawsuits by companies like Dominion and Smartmatic continue to move through the courts. Some, like the Fox News and Newsmax settlements, have resulted in massive financial penalties. Others, like the Smartmatic case against Fox, remain unresolved and could set further precedents for accountability in American media.
Legal experts have pointed out that the defamation per se standard applied in these cases is both significant and rare. While defamation suits often require plaintiffs to prove actual harm, per se cases presume damage due to the nature of the false statements. Still, plaintiffs must demonstrate that the statements were published, were false, and met the required level of fault—at least negligence for private figures, and “actual malice” for public figures. In the case of Newsmax, the court found these conditions satisfied, paving the way for a settlement that avoided a potentially even costlier trial.
For viewers and the broader public, the Newsmax settlement is yet another reminder of the real-world consequences of misinformation. The falsehoods about Dominion and the 2020 election were not harmless—they fueled distrust, litigation, and a cascade of legal actions that continue to reverberate across the media landscape. While Newsmax’s ratings are a fraction of Fox News’s, the network’s willingness to air and amplify baseless claims has now come with a steep price tag.
As the dust settles, one question lingers: Will these settlements change how media outlets handle conspiracy theories and unverified claims in the future? The financial penalties are certainly eye-catching, but the absence of public apologies or acknowledgments leaves open the possibility that the lessons of the past five years have yet to be fully learned.
For now, Dominion can claim another legal victory, and Newsmax faces the long road of paying off its multi-million-dollar settlement. The legal battles over the 2020 election may not be over, but with each new settlement, the cost of spreading falsehoods becomes harder to ignore.
