A voting machine company at the heart of President Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election accused the Justice Department on Tuesday of bringing a criminal case against it to further his administration’s baseless claims about that vote.
The parent company of London-based Smartmatic asked a federal judge in Miami to dismiss foreign bribery charges filed against it last year, alleging they amounted to little more than a vindictive and selective prosecution. The company also contends that Fox News and others it has sued for defamation for statements about the firm’s voting machines are exploiting the criminal case.
While such defense claims are notoriously difficult to win in court, they have gained traction with federal judges as the Justice Department under Trump has increasingly used its authority to target the president’s political foes.
“Since returning to office, President Trump has openly waged a campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies — chief among them those who undermine his mantra that the 2020 election was rigged,” attorneys for the company wrote in a court filing Tuesday.
“Put simply,” they added, “the charging decision is consistent with an administration that prioritizes targeting its enemies over equal protection under the law.”
Though Smartmatic machines were used in only one U.S. county during the 2020 election — heavily Democratic Los Angeles, which Trump lost by more than 1.8 million — the company has remained a target for Trump and his allies, who have claimed without evidence that the 2020 election was rigged.
The company’s claims of vindictive prosecution come as Trump has continued to fixate on his election loss to President Joe Biden. He has repeatedly called on the Justice Department to prosecute those he blames for the defeat, and in recent months, officials have launched a criminal inquiry into the 2020 vote in Fulton County, Georgia, and subpoenaed records tied to that election from officials in Arizona.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the claims lodged in Smartmatic’s court filing Tuesday. The U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, which is prosecuting the Smartmatic case, did not respond to questions about the company’s allegations.
The case at their center began under the Biden administration — and centers on another election entirely.
Federal prosecutors in Miami charged two Smartmatic executives in 2024 with paying bribes to win business in the Philippines in 2016. At the time, the Justice Department chose not to charge the company itself with wrongdoing.
However, department officials reversed course after Trump’s return to the White House, securing a six-count bribery and money-laundering indictment in October charging Smartmatic’s parent company, SGO Corporation Limited.
That step, the company’s lawyers argued Tuesday, was a rare one. Before Smartmatic’s indictment, the Justice Department had not filed criminal charges against a business in a foreign bribery case in more than 15 years — more often opting to resolve criminal inquiries through pre-indictment settlement agreements.
What’s more, in some of their first acts in office, Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a retreat from such foreign bribery prosecutions, saying they inhibited the ability of American companies to compete for business abroad.
That decision proved controversial at the time, as critics predicted it would foster corrupt business practices around the world. But the Justice Department moved forward with dismissing several pending cases brought under the United States’ foreign bribery laws and shuttering ongoing investigations — even as it began building its case against Smartmatic.
“The only consequential changes in this case since 2024 were the President, his DOJ and their well-documented crusade to unconstitutionally target their perceived political enemies,” company attorneys Jenny Kramer and Christopher C. Marquardt wrote.
Trump and his allies have persistently — and baselessly — claimed Smartmatic’s voting machines had a role in reversing the election to benefit Biden. They have maintained that the company’s technology, originally founded in Venezuela, was used to rig elections there before being exported to do the same around the world — despite a lack of evidence to back those claims.
Since the 2020 vote, Smartmatic has filed defamation suits against several right-wing figures including My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, former Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and Jeanine Pirro, a onetime Fox News host who is now D.C.’s U.S. attorney.
In their court filing Tuesday, company lawyers suggested that the case filed against Smartmatic was designed, at least in part, to aid those Trump allies as they defended themselves in court.
Lindell, for instance, took to social media days after a federal judge in Minnesota ruled in Smartmatic’s favor in its defamation case to allege that the case should be reopened because of the allegations of criminal wrongdoing filed against the company.
Lindell has been represented at times by fellow election denier Kurt Olsen, an attorney who now serves as the White House’s director of election security and integrity and who has been linked to ongoing Justice Department investigations involving the 2020 race.
Fox News has also cited the criminal case in its defense against a Smartmatic defamation suit in New York, asking the court to delay proceedings. Fox settled a similar defamation suit with voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, which has also drawn the scrutiny of 2020 election deniers, in 2023.
In Smartmatic’s case against Fox News, lawyers for the media company have argued that the Florida indictment has “fundamentally changed” its case and that it needs more time to prepare.
Smartmatic lawyers noted that Bondi’s brother, Brad Bondi, is now representing Fox in a separate antitrust matter. He entered his appearance in that case a month before the criminal case was filed against the voting machine company in Florida.
Historically, vindictive and selective prosecution motions, like the one Smartmatic filed Tuesday, have faced long odds in court as they require a defendant to prove that prosecutors, or someone influencing their decision-making, acted with “genuine animus” in deciding to file charges and that there is no other reason that explains why a case has been brought.
However, several prominent Trump adversaries have pursued them — with early signs of success — after finding themselves on the wrong end of an indictment.
Former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James each filed similar motions before criminal charges filed against them in Virginia were thrown out last year on an unrelated issue tied to the appointment of the U.S. attorney who secured the indictments against them.
A federal judge in Tennessee ruled last year there was a “realistic likelihood” that the Justice Department’s decision to pursue a years-old human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego García was motivated by revenge for successful suits he filed challenging his illegal deportation to El Salvador. The judge continues to weigh whether there is enough evidence of a vindictive motive in that case to warrant dismissal of the charges.
In Smartmatic’s case, the company and its charged executives have pleaded not guilty and are set for trial in 2027 if the court allows the case to move forward.
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