Vindictive and selective prosecution claims are rarely made — and even more rarely succeed — but they’ve become a feature of the revenge-based second Trump administration.
Following similar claims made by Kilmar Abrego Garcia, James Comey, Letitia James and others in response to their indictments over the past year, voting technology company Smartmatic has entered the fray.
The company became a right-wing fixation in connection with the 2020 election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, as Trump supporters falsely claimed Smartmatic had rigged that election and others. Those claims led the company to file defamation lawsuits against Fox News, Newsmax, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Michael Lindell and current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro.
In 2024, while Biden was president, the DOJ charged current and former Smartmatic executives in a bribery case with allegations related to the 2016 elections in the Philippines. The company itself wasn’t charged — that is, until a superseding indictment in October 2025.
In a motion to dismiss those charges, filed Tuesday in Florida, Smartmatic argues the timing is not coincidental.
“Instead, 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, like Smartmatic,” the company said in the dismissal motion.
While making the big ask of dismissing the charges outright, the company said it should at least get to probe what it called Trump and his allies’ “improper involvement in the DOJ’s decision to vindictively and selectively target SGO for prosecution.” SGO Corporation Limited is the U.K.-based parent company of Smartmatic.
Smartmatic drew a parallel to the case of Abrego, whom the administration illegally deported and, after resisting court orders for his return, eventually brought him back but only to face criminal charges in Tennessee. Smartmatic noted the judge there found Abrego showed a “realistic likelihood of vindictiveness” due to the timing of his indictment.
The voting technology company also argues that the type of charges it faces is relevant, specifically the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Smartmatic noted that the DOJ not only hasn’t brought an FCPA case against a company in 15 years, but that this administration has walked away from using that charge in general. The motion recalled that, in line with new official policy, the DOJ in Trump’s second term “swiftly and publicly abandoned large numbers of active FCPA and bribery matters.”
The company said the decision to single it out, therefore, “only makes sense in the context that Smartmatic has continued to pursue defamation litigation against the President’s allies for destroying its business.”
A judge is unlikely to dismiss the charges outright based on this motion alone. The bigger question may be whether the company’s fallback request for discovery and a hearing is granted, as it was for Abrego — which, as it has in Abrego’s case, would effectively put the administration on trial to justify the charging decision, something the government typically doesn’t have to explain.
Whatever comes of the motion, it’s a useful snapshot of the administration’s vengeance-based approach to date, tying in the recent unsuccessful quest to charge Democratic lawmakers as well as Trump’s call to prosecute Jack Smith, the former special counsel who brought two criminal cases against him, including one stemming from his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Smartmatic accuses the president of having “openly waged a campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies — chief among them those who undermine his mantra that the 2020 election was rigged — and demanded the … DOJ … take up the sword.”
