Dominion Voting demands Sidney Powell retract "baseless" election claims

Dominion Voting Systems sent a letter to former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell on Wednesday night demanding that she retract her “wild, knowingly baseless and false accusations” about the company’s voting machines.

Why it matters: The letter is the first step in possible legal action against Powell, who has made several public appearances claiming, without evidence, that Dominion's machines were involved in an international communist conspiracy to commit voter fraud and rig the election against President Trump.

• Specifically, Powell has claimed that the company worked with Hugo Chávez, the late Venezuelan dictator, and employed machines with a "vote flipping" algorithm.
• The Trump campaign announced in November that Powell was no longer working with President Trump or the campaign after a wild press conference in which she said President-elect Biden won the 2020 election thanks to "communist money" from the Venezuelan regime.

What they're saying: "While you are entitled to your own opinions, Ms. Powell, you are not entitled to your own facts," Dominion's attorneys wrote in the letter.

• "Defamatory falsehoods are actionable in court and the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that ‘there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact.’ Dominion welcomes transparency and a full investigation of the relevant facts in a court of law, where it is confident the truth will prevail."
• "Despite repeatedly touting the overwhelming 'evidence' of your assertions during your media campaign, every court to which you submitted that so-called 'evidence' has dismissed each of your sham litigations," the letter continued.

The big picture: Smartmatic, another electronic voting system company that has been the target of baseless conspiracy theories by Trump allies, demanded retractions from Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News on Monday for making similar "false and defamatory statements" related to alleged election fraud.