DOJ accuses Smartmatic’s president of overseas bribery, complicating defamation lawsuits against right-wing media

A Smartmatic executive, who was not accused of wrongdoing, demonstrating the use of an election machine in Manila.

US federal prosecutors have accused Smartmatic’s president of bribing election authorities in the Philippines to keep and expand the election technology company’s footprint in the country.

Roger Piñate, the president and cofounder of Smartmatic, faked invoices and contracts in the late 2010s to help pay $1 million to Andres Bautista, the former head of the Phillippine elections commission, the Justice Department said in a Thursday press release.

Smartmatic became a household name in the aftermath of the 2020 US election, when allies of then-President Donald Trump falsely accused it — and rival election technology company Dominion Voting Systems — of rigging votes to benefit now-President Joe Biden.

In reality, Smartmatic’s technology was used in only one county during the 2020 election, in Los Angeles.

But the indictment can still help Fox News, Newsmax, and other defendants in Smartmatic’s many defamation lawsuits, which have argued that scandal — not claims about election-rigging — caused Smartmatic to lose contracts.

The indictment against Piñate has not yet been made public. The Justice Department’s press release published Thursday, detailing the charges, does not allege that Smartmatic’s technology was used to manipulate votes.

According to the Justice Department, Piñate, along with another Smartmatic employee, laundered the funds by inflating the cost of each voting machine used in the 2016 Philippine election. The bribery scheme spanned bank accounts in Asia, Europe, and Florida, where the case was brought, prosecutors say.

Through the bribery of Bautista — a codefendant in the case — Smartmatic retained and expanded its election services in the 2016 election, prosecutors say.

According to CNN, Bautista awarded Smartmatic $199 million in contracts for the 2016 Phillippine presidential election.

In a statement, Smartmatic said the indicted employees were placed on a leave of absence and stressed that the Justice Department did not allege any voter fraud.

“No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted,” the company said in a statement. “Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by.”

Following the 2020 election, Smartmatic and Dominion both launched civil defamation lawsuits against Trump allies and right-wing media organizations that pushed false claims about the companies.

Smartmatic filed still-pending lawsuits against Fox News, Newsmax, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and others. Some of the lawsuits are being funded by Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic party donor.

Giuliani and Powell both pushed a false conspiracy theory that Smartmatic and Dominion were somehow in cahoots with each other to manipulate votes. In addition to suing them, Smartmatic sued media organizations that it said allowed those claims to go unchallenged.

Fox News paid $787.5 million last year to settle claims brought by Dominion, averting a trial.

Smartmatic agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit against One America News, another right-wing media company, earlier this year.

Most other cases from both companies remain ongoing.

Smartmatic has a small domestic presence but a much larger international business than Dominion. In court filings, it has said its canceled international contracts in the wake of false claims about the 2020 election mean it should receive even greater damages.

But some of its defamation lawsuits have been snagged by claims of wrongdoing in the Philippines. Information about the alleged bribery scheme was disclosed in court filings last year in the lawsuit Smartmatic brought against One America News.

In 2023, COMELEC — the Philippine election commission — banned Smartmatic over the scandal, but the decision was overturned earlier this year by the country’s supreme court.

Defendants in Smartmatic’s defamation cases have argued that Smartmatic has vastly overstated its alleged damages.

They say Smartmatic’s overseas contract dealings and other issues with the company — not their claims about the company’s role in the 2020 election — have led to lost business.