An electoral system employee in hiding from death threats has filed a defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s campaign, two of his lawyers and some conservative media outlets.
Eric Coomer, security director at Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, said he wants his life back after being named in false charges as a protagonist in “manipulating” the election for President-elect Joe Biden. There is no indication that the elections were falsified.
His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Denver County, Colorado district court, cites the Trump campaign, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway Pundit, Colorado conservative activist Joseph Oltmann, and conservative media Newsmax and One America. News Network.
“I’ve been put in the public eye by people with political and financial agendas, but essentially I’m a private person,” Coomer said in a statement.
“While I intend to do everything I can to get back to my previous lifestyle, I have few illusions in this regard,” he said. “And so today I place my trust in the legal process, which has already revealed the truth of the 2020 presidential election.”
Dominion, which has provided vote-counting equipment to several states, has denied the allegations that it had mixed up Trump’s votes in Biden’s favor, and no evidence has emerged to support those allegations.
Dominion and another voice technology company, Smartmatic, have begun to fight back against mention in baseless conspiracy theories. After legal threats were made, Fox News Channel and Newsmax have been airing retractions of some claims on their networks in recent days.
There was no immediate response from those named in the lawsuit.
His lawyers said Coomer has become “the face of the false claims.” Coomer’s name first received public attention in a podcast by Oltmann, who claimed to have heard a strategic call from Antifa activists. When the prospect of a Trump victory came up, Oltmann said a man identified as “Eric of Dominion” supposedly said, “Don’t worry about the election, Trump is not going to win. I have … for it. taken care of, ”adding a curse.
In an op-ed written for the Denver Post, Coomer wrote that he has no connections with Antifa, was never in conversation and that the idea of a recording of him being “completely made up”.
The fact-checking website Snopes said Oltmann has not cooperated in attempts to verify his claims.
Oltmann also alleged that Coomer made anti-Trump comments on Facebook. The lawsuit acknowledged that Coomer was criticizing the president on his private Facebook page; he now says his page is inactive.
Oltmann’s allegations spread after he was interviewed by Malkin and Gateway Pundit. Eric Trump tweeted about them. OANN, and his White House correspondent Chanel Rion, reported on it. Powell, who mistakenly identified Coomer as working for Smartmatic, said at a press conference that Coomers’ social media is “filled with hatred” against Trump, and she later repeated her allegations in a Newsmax interview.
Giuliani called Coomer at a press conference “a cruel, cruel man. He wrote terrible things about the president … He is completely warped, ”the lawsuit said.
Fox News Channel, another network popular with Trump supporters, is not being prosecuted, and Coomer is using Fox’s Tucker Carlson to support his cause. The lawsuit notes that a planned Powell appearance on Carlson’s show did not take place after she failed to provide evidence for her allegations.
Coomer told The Associated Press earlier this month that right-wing websites posted his photo, home address, and details about his family. Death threats began almost immediately.
He said his father, an army veteran, received a handwritten letter asking, “How does it feel to have a traitor for a son.”
“It’s terrifying,” Coomer said. “I have participated in international elections in all kinds of post-conflict countries where election violence is real and people are murdered for it. And I feel like we’re about to achieve that. “