MIAMI -- The head of an electronic voting company being targeted by allies of President Donald Trump said claims that it helped flip the election for President-elect Joe Biden threaten to undermine Americans' faith in democracy.
Antonio Mugica, CEO of Florida-based Smartmatic, said for years he watched as democracy in his native Venezuela was destroyed by lies and conspiracy theories pushed from the highest levels of the country's socialist government.
Now he fears many Americans are being too complacent in the face of a similar disinformation campaign.
"When a candidate questions the election in some emerging market, in Africa or South America, it stays there. It doesn't affect the entire planet," Mugica said. "Now the role model is that if you lose, you basically say you didn't lose. You say you were cheated."
Last week, Smartmatic began sending letters to Fox News, attorney Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies threatening legal action unless they fully retract claims that software developed by a U.S. affiliate that it sold more than a decade ago altered the outcome of the election.
Fact-checkers at the AP and other outlets have debunked the claims, while Trump's attorney general and cybersecurity officials have found no evidence of fraud.
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But Trump's allies are pressing ahead. Last week, former Trump attorney Sidney Powell appeared on Fox Business to accuse Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's former chief of staff of being the ringleader of what she called a "Cyber Pearl Harbor."
Smartmatic in its letter to Fox's legal counsel said the "demonstrably false and defamatory" statements could easily have been disproven by a simple internet search.
"The damage your disinformation campaign has done, and will do, to Smartmatic's revenue and business valuation will be measured in the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars," according to the letter.
Neither Giuliani, Powell nor Fox News responded to a request for comment.