Smartmatic voter tech company filed a 285-page, $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Mind you, this is not the first lawsuit against some of these folks. Dominion is already suing Sidney Powell for $1.3 billion. Rudy Giuliani is also being sued by Dominion for $1.3 billion. Well, now it looks like many other are getting caught up in the net and it is not going to go well for them.

The lawsuit starts off with one of my favorite introductions of any court filing, possibly ever:

1. The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.

2. Defendants have always known these facts. They knew Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 U.S. election. They knew the election was not stolen. They knew the election was not rigged or fixed. They knew these truths just as they knew the Earth is round and two plus two equals four.

3. Defendants did not want Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to win the election. They wanted President Donald Trump and Vice President Michael Pence to win re-election. Defendants were disappointed. But they also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story. Defendants decided to tell people that the election was stolen from President Trump and Vice President Pence.

4. Defendants had an obvious problem with their story. They needed a villain. They needed someone to blame. They needed someone whom they could get others to hate. A story of good versus evil, the type that would incite an angry mob, only works if the storyteller provides the audience with someone who personifies evil.

5. Without any true villain, Defendants invented one. Defendants decided to make Smartmatic the villain in their story. Smartmatic is an election technology and software company. It was incorporated in Delaware and its U.S. operations are headquartered in Florida. In the 2020 U.S. election, Smartmatic provided election technology and software in Los Angeles County. Nowhere else. Smartmatic had a relatively small, non-controversial role in the 2020 U.S. election.

6. Those facts would not do for Defendants. So, the Defendants invented new ones. In their story, Smartmatic was a Venezuelan company under the control of corrupt dictators from socialist countries. In their story, Smartmatic’s election technology and software were used in many of the states with close outcomes. And, in their story, Smartmatic was responsible for stealing the 2020 election by switching and altering votes to rig the election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Read the entire filing here.

And late in the day Dominion also made major moves in their case, sending letters to social platforms asking them to preserve posts, offering a glimpse at their target list:

Dominion just sent letters to the social platforms asking them to preserve posts, and offered a glimpse at their target list: pic.twitter.com/W3WzepFgiL

— Ben Smith (@benyt) February 4, 2021

Actions have consequences. And those consequences appear to be expensive.