Fox is now asking the court to impose sanctions that could dismantle Smartmatic’s core damages claim, including asking for a ruling that the company intentionally “spoliated evidence,” an order striking all lost-profits claims arising after 2022, and a directive limiting the amount of damages.

The network also wants the court to instruct jurors, should the case go to a trial, to presume the deleted data would have supported Fox’s defense.

“Nearly two dozen Smartmatic executives and sales personnel deleted data relevant to Smartmatic’s multi-billion-dollar damages claims either shortly before or while this case was pending,” Fox’s lawyers wrote in the motion. “For many witnesses, the spoliation is pervasive and resulted in the apparent deletion of all, or nearly all, of their mobile data.”

The motion also claims that another executive “directed his subordinates to doctor key customer records to manufacture support for the massive damages case Smartmatic had invented.” Fox argues that the coordinated data deletions deprived the network of evidence it needed to challenge Smartmatic’s financial claims, as well as the company’s credibility.

“Smartmatic cannot be allowed to rely on these witnesses’ testimony, at trial or at summary judgment, or to pursue post-2022 lost-profits claims or general damages, when it intentionally prevented Fox from obtaining evidence that is highly relevant to Fox’s defenses,” the motion argues.

The voting tech company’s lawyers had also accused Fox’s senior corporate executives, including Rupert Murdoch, of intentionally destroying evidence in the case. Its lawyer levied the allegations on May 14 in court filings, claiming that Fox “orchestrated the destruction of text messages across all levels of their corporate hierarchy… despite a clear duty to preserve evidence.” Smartmatic previously said some of the evidence involved deleted texts from November to December 2020, after several Fox hosts repeated or did not challenge guests who repeated President Donald Trump election fraud allegations against the company.

Fox pushed back on the allegations that its own executives withheld documents, noting in its court filing on Wednesday that it “promptly and voluntarily” told Smartmatic about the mobile data it was missing.

“There is zero evidence of any bad intent or culpability on the part of anyone at Fox to spoliate evidence or conceal anything,” Fox wrote.

Meanwhile, each party has included a substantial number of redactions in recent court filings.

Erik Connolly, an attorney for Smartmatic, told the Washington Examiner that Fox is now making “baseless attacks” that are “nothing more than retaliation, a deliberate effort to avoid addressing its own destruction of evidence.

“Fox continues to smear Smartmatic to distract from the truth: Fox lied following the 2020 election and has repeatedly lied to shield itself from accountability in this case,” Connolly said, claiming that contrary to the motion submitted Wednesday, the company has “preserved and produced evidence in accordance with New York law.”

In its court filing, Fox also emphasized Smartmatic’s past exposure to criminal and regulatory scrutiny, citing the company’s history of investigations “into bribery, tax evasion, and improper dealings with Hugo Chavez,” the late Venezuelan president who tapped Smartmatic to replace the country’s voting machines in 2004.

“Smartmatic knew better,” Fox argued, saying the company had long been familiar with litigation and evidence preservation obligations.

According to federal prosecutors, Piñate and other former Smartmatic officials paid $1 million in bribes to a former elections commissioner in the Philippines to secure $199 million in contracts for the country’s 2016 elections. During the end of the Biden administration, Piñate and three others were charged on Aug. 6 in South Florida with conspiracy to commit foreign bribery and money laundering.

The DOJ said the conspirators used inflated billing, sham contracts, and shell companies to move funds through bank accounts across Asia, Europe, and the U.S.

Smartmatic, which denies criminal wrongdoing and previously placed Piñate and another executive on leave, said the company is not a party to the federal charges and that “no voter fraud has been alleged.”

The company maintains that Fox’s broadcasts falsely claiming Smartmatic helped rig the 2020 election severely damaged its business. Smartmatic is seeking $2.7 billion in damages and has vowed to take Fox to trial.

The case follows Fox’s record-setting $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in 2023. Earlier this year, Smartmatic also settled a parallel defamation lawsuit with Newsmax for $40 million, according to a regulatory filing.

SMARTMATIC HEAD CHARGED WITH BRIBING PHILIPPINE ELECTION OFFICIALS FOR CONTRACTS

Both Smartmatic and Fox have filed motions asking the court to decide the case without a jury trial, and the voting tech company merely wants a jury to determine compensation. If those efforts fail and no settlement is reached, the lawsuit could proceed to trial later this year or by 2026.

Now, with both sides locked in an intensifying pretrial battle, Fox is urging the court to weigh the alleged data deletions as grounds to limit Smartmatic’s claims sharply — potentially reshaping the trajectory of what remains one of the most consequential media defamation suits in U.S. history.