Justice is coming to Fox News, America’s largest cable news network, and it has a cost. Fox could soon pay up to $8 billion in damages for a series of pernicious, dangerous, and deliberate lies. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race, Fox News amplified, created, and broadcast false claims that Smartmatic, a nonpartisan election technology company, somehow helped “rig” the entire election against Donald Trump. That lie, told relentlessly by Fox News’ top on-air talent, drastically hurt Smartmatic’s business across the globe and led to their massive defamation suit. Summary judgment hearings on the case could begin as soon as November in a Manhattan state courtroom. On Sept. 26, on the eve of its own defamation trial in Delaware, Newsmax, another conservative cable network that propagated the same Big Lie, settled with Smartmatic for an undisclosed, though believed to be hefty, amount after the technology company sought $1.4 billion in damages. But Fox’s predicament is much different and far more perilous. Quite simply, Smartmatic’s defamation suit against Fox News could wipe the network out. Combined with mounting shareholder lawsuits — filed due to Fox’s lies about the Big Lie — punitive, economic, and reputational damages could amount to a devastating sum. Here’s how. Two companies — Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic — both assert that Fox News’ broadcast lies damaged their businesses. Fox does not dispute that it promoted these lies. Instead, it claims that Smartmatic is not worth its well-documented $3 billion valuation. For perspective, the much smaller Dominion was valued at only $80 million prior to the defamation campaign pushed by Fox News and other conservative networks. Yet Fox News agreed to pay Dominion a startling $787 million for the false claims it broadcast about the company. Dominion’s settlement is believed to be one of the largest defamation payments in U.S. history. Perhaps not for long: the Dominion settlement could soon be swamped by the damages paid to Smartmatic in the New York State case against Fox News. The financial logic is quite simple: if Smartmatic is multiple times the size of Dominion, then their payout will also be multiplied. Specifically, if punitive damages are awarded in the Smartmatic vs. Fox News case, the payout could be two or three times the actual damages of $2.7 billion (meaning $5.4 to $8.1 billion), according to New York law. When coupled with the shareholder lawsuits claiming Fox News also misled investors about the material impact of the combined defamation cases, Lachlan Murdoch’s leadership of parent company News Corp surely begins to look more precarious. News Corp’s attorneys also must be deeply worried about how sympathetic Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch will appear before the jury when they take the stand in a New York courthouse during the Smartmatic trial. There is always the chance Fox will settle. But with cash in the bank from the Newsmax settlement and a multi-million dollar investment by billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Smartmatic now has enough fuel in the tanks to fight it out, win at trial, and to prevail in any appeals. Lying has consequences. A Manhattan federal jury recently ordered Trump to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll $83 million for defaming her. Rudy Giuliani was bankrupted after a federal jury in Washington awarded $148 million to two Georgia election workers he defamed after the 2020 election. And the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been ordered to pay a total of nearly $1.4 billion to the Sandy Hook, Conn., families he gaslighted after their children were at their elementary school. Americans need a vibrant, free, and diverse press, and the prospect of suing a news organization out of existence is not one we should relish. But Fox News, by betraying the highest ideals of journalism in the name of profits, must now answer for its actions. It not only damaged legitimate companies, it also undermined trust in journalism and in America’s demonstrably free and fair elections. Fox, along with Newsmax, helped unleash a wave of violence and political division that continues to tear at the nation’s fabric. Defamation suits like Smartmatic’s may be one of our last, best shields against such corrosive disinformation. With Trump already beginning to sow doubt in the integrity of the 2024 elections and with Republicans teeing up election challenges if he loses, the damage Fox caused in 2020 is coming home to roost. It’s time to hold them accountable. Wilson is a 30-year veteran of Republican politics and co-founder of the Lincoln Project. Mehlhorn is a Democratic political activist.