One of the attack vectors of Trump and his allies has been to attack the voting machine used during the election, claiming that they were used for fraud.
This obviously have negative effects on the companies behind the voting machines, and they are clearly not going to just accept this. The two main companies behind the voting machines, Dominion and Smartmatic, have started to take steps towards legal action. On top of that, at least one employee from one of these companies has also taken steps.
Smartmatic started out by demanding that Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network retracted their fraud claims. This led to at least Fox News fact-checking their own claims, finding the false, as did Newsmax.
Dominion also came out swinging with 21 retraction and/or record preservation demand letters, some of which were quite brutal – see e.g. the letter to Mellissa Carone. Before those 21 letters, they had already sent one to Sidney Powell.
From the news articles I have read and the law podcasts I have listened to, both Dominion and Smartmatic have strong cases, so it seems likely that a number of news sources and Trump allies will find themselves in deep legal trouble. It is also going to be interesting to see what will be turned up during discovery.
It is interesting just how fast those news channels caved on this. Their lawyers must have looked at it and realized they would be in trouble if it goes to court.
American courts are very lenient with news organizations if the reporters involved can show they made a real investigation. Even if the accusations they make turn out to be bogus if they can show they interviewed people and traced what information they could it is really hard to get defamation cases to stick. The speed and formality with which the news channels back tracked says they made these accusations based on nothing.