Far-right network One America News (OAN) has removed stories relating to Dominion Voting Systems from its website, without issuing any retractions or editors’ notes, according to a report from Business Insider.
“For months, the Trump-allied media organization has published stories about Dominion Voting Systems and perpetuated the false conspiracy theory that the company rigged the 2020 president election for President Joe Biden at the expense of former president Donald Trump,” Jacob Shamsian of BI reports. “But sometime in January, OAN removed stories about Dominion from its website.”
Stories about Smartmatic, another election technology company included in the conspiracy theories, have also reportedly been removed, along with stories about pro-Trump, pro-conspiracy theory attorneys Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Lin Wood.
According to a review of the Wayback Machine internet archive, OAN had published more than a dozen stories categorized with the “Dominion Voting System” tag, including stories based on false claims of vote-switching. As of Wednesday, the tag showed just one article, published on January 4, about a “MAGA victory rally” in Georgia, according to Business Insider.
Shamsian characterizes the quiet removal of the stories as a “possible attempt to fend off a lawsuit” from Dominion. No retraction notices or editors’ notes were reportedly posted in connection with the removals, unlike American Thinker‘s recent retraction of unsupported stories about Dominion; the links to the previously-published stories on OAN now lead only to a 404 error page.
Dominion Voting Systems has already sued Powell for more than $1.3 billion, over her repeated public assertions against the company, for which no evidence has been provided. In December, Dominion sent more than 20 letters to multiple companies and individuals, either demanding retractions or record preservation in anticipation of defamation litigation. The company has also sent a cease-and-desist letter to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, telling him that defamation litigation over his ongoing claims about Dominion was “imminent,” and demanding he retain communications between him, Powell, Giuliani, Wood, and any members of the media with whom he discussed the company.
OAN has been staunchly pro-Trump, amplifying voter fraud conspiracy theories and dancing around a true acceptance Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. On Inauguration Day, a reference to “President Biden” or “President Joe Biden” on OAN’s website couldn’t be found; the closest OAN came to acknowledging Biden as president was an early-morning story suggesting that Biden’s incoming national security team may “target” Trump supporters in the battle against domestic terrorism.
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