DEFAM 2 libel
SEE THREE 12 25
see main
see 1st amend
SEE BBC
merri ok
see e jean carroll
MODeration eg fox rudy big lie, other trump posse lin wood etc JONES INFOWARS}:
see press suppression via LIBEL defam TRUMP
SEE 1ST AMEND SULLIVAN ACTUAL MALICE STD ~ TRUMP
see fascism
see legal suppression?
see dominion smartmatic
see fox and salem big lie BS correction
see dis-bar
RE WSJ defam bday card sullivan 1st AMEND?
bak 4 24
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SEE KASH ON MEDIA SUITS, FAIL
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AN 10 26
Trump faces legal blow as BBC asks judge to crash his delay tactics
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an 10 26
The BBC is pulling out all of its big cards to defend itself against President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the broadcasting company. Jack Smith, attorney and former special counsel for the United States Department of Justice, has been subpoenaed on their behalf. While Smith has not objected to the subpoena, Trump’s legal team has opposed it. Adam Klasfeld, editor-in-chief of All Rise News, shared the news in a post to X. The decision comes as the broadcast giant requested that a judge force Trump to sit for a deposition after he delayed being deposed several times, with Trump recently alleging he’s unable to sit for a deposition until early to mid January 2027.
The ruling notes, in part: “Plaintiff cannot seriously dispute the injustice of blocking Mr. Smith’s testimony. This Court has made it clear that the ‘Defendant is entitled to discover the contours of [Plaintiff’s] message’ in his Ellipse speech and the ‘impression that Plaintiff fomented violence,’ including, ‘whether that impression was given or received; if that impression was given or received; whether [Plaintiff] gave it intentionally or otherwise; the breadth of the audience of the message and impression; and the extent of any resulting injury or harm.'”
Trump remains in a legal battle with the BBC after he sued the company, accusing it of defamation and violating Florida's deceptive trade practices law over the BBC-produced documentary, Trump: A Second Chance. The documentary examines Trump’s political ascension ahead of his second term, as well as the fallout from the January 2021 U.S. Capitol attacks.
Those involved in creating the documentary acknowledge that two separate portions of one of Trump’s speeches, in which he seemingly encourages violence, were spliced together. In Trump’s lawsuit, he says the final edit depicts a false narrative.
BBC’s legal team says Trump has delayed the deposition on multiple occasions, and even recently canceled an agreed-upon date for his deposition. Trump’s reasoning for backing out is reportedly due to “matters of national importance.”
BBC lawyers said the initial proposed date for the deposition was for July, but they didn’t hear back until several follow-up requests until they settled on October 16.
In Trump’s filing to delay the deposition the last time around, BBC’s attorneys say they received a note saying, “Plaintiff’s counsel responded on September 28, 2026, indicating that ‘the President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance’ and that counsel would ‘endeavor to provide you with a replacement date by the end of this week.’ He did not.”
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FAIL
AN 9 26
Attorney Andrew Weissman, known for his work as FBI general counsel under former President Barack Obama and a consultant for the late special counsel Robert Mueller during the Russian investigation in 2017, is the target of a defamation lawsuit from a former Trump administration official. But according to Law & Crime reporter Matt Naham, the lawsuit is running into major obstacles.
The former Trump official is attorney Stefan C. Passantino, who served in the Office of White House Counsel during the first Trump administration and later represented conservative Cassidy Hutchinson during an investigation of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building. The lawsuit, Naham reports, alleges that Weissmann defamed Passantino when he said — without mentioning him by name — that he "coached" Hutchinson (a former aide to ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows) to "lie" to Congress during her testimony.
But on Monday, September 21, the lawsuit hit suffered a major rebuke when U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan (an appointee of former President Joe Biden) strongly disagreed with Passantino's claims.
AliKhan, in a ruling, wrote, "To resolve the relevant question, the court looks to the full transcript of the September 14 deposition. The court concludes that Mr. Passantino's claims about the message of the transcript are not only legally conclusory, but also incorrect. The transcript, far from contradicting Mr. Weissmann's statement, supports it."
The judge also wrote, "Ms. Hutchinson's statements indicate that Mr. Passantino repeatedly prompted Ms. Hutchinson to lie. For example, Mr. Passantino's advice included telling Ms. Hutchinson that 'Your go-to, Cass,' is 'I don't recall,' even when she asked about answering 'certain questions that [she] would recall.' When Ms. Hutchinson told Mr. Passantino, 'I'm f[—–]. I just lied.'
Mr. Passantino purportedly responded, 'You didn't lie … They don't know what you know, Cassidy. They don't know that you can recall some of these things. So you saying 'I don't recall' is an entirely acceptable response to this … In other words, the transcript reflects that even as Mr. Passantino nominally instructed Ms. Hutchinson not to lie, he repeatedly urged her to say 'I don't recall' based on the unverifiability of that response — not based on its truth."
AliKhan continued, "He encouraged her to say 'I don't recall' whenever the Committee would not know the difference, even when Ms. Hutchinson indicated to him that she did in fact recall relevant information."
Naham notes that Passantino "represented Hutchinson for three January 6 Committee depositions, advising her that 'I don't recall' was an 'entirely acceptable' response if she didn't '100 percent recall something' down to the last detail."
"Before Hutchinson's fourth and fifth depositions, however, she fired Passantino," according to Naham. "And though she herself said that Passantino 'never told me to lie,' the judge saw something else in the transcript."
Naham points out that Passantino's lawsuit "alleged that Weissmann's post amounted to an 'insidious lie' and 'smear' that damaged his reputation and harmed him financially."
But AliKhan disagreed, noting the "objective reasonableness" of Weissmann's statement.
Where Passantino goes from here, according to Naham, remains to be seen.
"Law & Crime sought comment from one of Passantino's lawyers and asked whether an appeal will follow," according to Naham.
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RWW 8 26
- Caleb Groves @ The Atlanta Journal Constitution: ‘2000 Mules’ maker settles defamation case with Gwinnett man on eve of trial
Mark Andrews sued Dinesh D’Souza after movie falsely portrayed him ‘harvesting’ ballots for 2020 presidential election.
- Leigh Kimmins @ The Daily Beast: Eyebrow-Raising Letter From Trump’s Blonde Aide, 35, Exposed
The whole world is watching the relationship between the president and his favorite assistant.
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rww 7 26
- Edvard Pettersson @ Courthouse News Service: Hunter Biden wins $1.7 million in punitive damages against Patrick Byrne
A federal judge said the former Overstock.com CEO knew his claims that Hunter Biden had sought an $800 million bribe from Iran were fabricated.
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AN 5 26
In December, President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against the BBC, seeking the enormous sum of $5 billion under claims that the British news outlet selectively edited one of his speeches to give the impression that he was responsible for the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Now, Politico senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein reports that a judge has dealt a massive blow to Trump’s case.
According to Gerstein, the Florida judge overseeing the case has refused a request by Trump’s legal team to have the magistrate judge overseeing the discovery portion of the case reassigned. The president’s lawyers had asked for a replacement for Judge Enjolique Lett, who had previously served as an attorney for Orbis, a company Trump sued in relation to the infamous Steele dossier, a controversial 2017 document that alleged a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign.
The decision made by Judge Roy Altman asserts that the Trump legal team’s basis for the request was “unavailing,” rejecting the two arguments they put forth. They had questioned the mechanism for the assignment of Lett, which Altman rejected, saying the magistrate had been assigned based on workload and nothing else. They also questioned Lett’s ability to remain impartial considering her involvement with the Orbis lawsuit, but as Altman pointed out, the law states that judges can only recuse themselves from a case. “Accordingly,” wrote Altman, “we’ll leave any decision regarding Magistrate Judge Lett’s recusal to her sound judgment.”
Trump’s lawsuit stems from the assertion that the editing of a BBC piece was libelous. He claims that the news outlet intentionally edited a speech he delivered on January 6th, 2021, as the Capitol insurrection began, in a way that made it appear he had urged supporters to acts of violence.
The BBC lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal actions Trump has taken against news organizations. Some of these suits have been more successful than others, garnering Trump multimillion-dollar settlements from the likes of CBS and ABC. Another nearly half-billion dollar lawsuit against CNN was dismissed, and suits against the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are currently ongoing.
His latest legal blow comes on the heels of another setback in his case against the Wall Street Journal, in which a judge declared that Trump’s legal team could not use the process of discovery to search for evidence of their yet-unsupported claims. The judge, who had previously thrown the suit out for being "conclusory and without factual support,” has called the case “expensive yet groundless.”
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SEE LIBEL, TOURISM UK EAST EUR SON PREZ ALBANIA, FAIL BUT CRACK DOOR COTTAGE INDUSTRY GRIFTY?
5 13? 26 good YT dn
claR 180 AFTER BAD PRESS, JOINED BY ---
FEDSOC HERIT CLAREMONSTERS
SEVERAL HERIT EG Mar 19, 2025
Join leading libel litigators and First Amendment scholars to discuss the ramifications and constitutionality of the Supreme Court's landmark NYT v. Sullivan decision.
Free to Defame?: Revisiting NYT v. Sullivan’s Actual Malice Standard in Libel Law - YouTube
### "Murder the Truth": David Enrich on Right-Wing Campaign to ... www.youtube.com › watch
[
19:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71ex9pAe248)
Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-yt The new book Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign ...
YouTube · Democracy Now! · Mar 20, 2025
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AN 12 25
Donald Trump's efforts to sue the Pulitzer Prize board over defamation claims took a turn for the president last week, according to a new report from Law & Crime, after the board demanded extensive documents in discovery pertaining to everything from his psychological history to his prescription medication use.
Trump first sued the board back in 2022over a statement the board released defending prizes it awarded in 2018 to the New York Timesand theWashington Postreporting related to collusion between his first presidential campaign and the Russian government, after Trump demanded that the prizes be rescinded. The board's statement explained that "two independent reviews" of the reports awarded in 2018 showed that no aspects of them were refuted by special counsel Robert Mueller's Russian collusion findings, despite Trump's claims.
In claiming defamation from this statement, Trump's lawsuit nevertheless called the Russia connection a "now-debunked theory," and alleged that he suffered reputational harm and damages from it.
As of Thursday, the case had reached the discovery phase, with the Pulitzer board submitting a 12-page filing with a "litany of broad discovery demands" for Trump's legal team. In addition to demanding more typical documents pertaining to Trump's various lawsuits and claims about the political impact of the Pulitzer Prizes, the board also requested a wide range of documents detailing much more personal and intimate details.
This includes "all" of the president's tax returns dating from 2015 to now, so as to show any potential financial harm caused by the Pulitzer board's actions. It also requested health records and prescription histories to demonstrate proof of Trump's claims of mental and physical anguish.
"To the extent You seek damages for any physical ailment or mental or emotional injury arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, all Documents (whether held by You or by third parties under Your control or who could produce them at your direction) concerning Your medical and/or psychological health from January 1, 2015, to present, including any prescription medications you have been prescribed or have taken," the filing explained. "For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all Documents Concerning Your annual physical examination. To the extent you do not seek such damages in this action, please confirm so in writing."
Per the filing, Trump's legal team could potentially avoid providing some of these sensitive materials by deciding not to pursue damages specifically for the alleged harms they pertain to.
The board's filing also leaves open the possibility for Trump's team to claim that certain materials are privileged and cannot be provided, though it will have to explain why.
"With respect to your responses to the following Requests, if any information is withheld because of a claim of privilege, state the basis for your claim of privilege with respect to such information and the specific ground(s) on which the claim of privilege rests," the filing noted.
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an 12 25
Donald Trump is suing the BBC for defamation over a Panorama documentary from October 2024, but according to an analysis of the suit's claims by Britain's The i Paper, the "audacious" effort could be undone by a "massive presumption" the lawsuit has yet to prove.
Trump's legal team accused the documentary Trump: A Second Chance?of “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 presidential race by way of a “false, defamatory, deceptive, inflammatory and malicious depiction" of him. The BBC previously conceded that the president's main sticking point with the film — an edited version of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech at The Ellipse in Washington D.C. that made it seem like he directly told the crowd to "fight like hell" ahead of the Capitol Riots — was the result of an "error of judgment" by the production and offered him an apology.
The network did, however, argue that there were no grounds for claiming defamation due to the documentary. Trump disagreed and is now seeking $10 billion in damages, or roughly £7.5 billion.
In an analysis of the legal filing, The i Paper's Simon Marks noted that Trump's suit is lacking one crucial piece of evidence at the heart of its argument: proof that any actual person changed their vote after watching the Panorama film.
"The lawsuit notably fails to identify a single viewer of the documentary in Florida who might have been misled or aggrieved by its content," Marks explained. "Instead, it relies on a massive presumption that someone, somewhere in the state, must have seen it, speaking of 'the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary before the BBC had it removed.'"
Marks also noted that the suit attempted to paint "the BBC as a broadcasting powerhouse in the sunshine state of Florida" in order to justify its claims.
Trump is suing the network in a Florida court, with his and the BBC's legal teams having gone back and forth over whether or not there is legal standing for this venue. Trump's side argued that since the BBC News website is available in Florida, the case could be brought in the state. The network pushed back, claiming that the Panorama documentary was not available in the US due to geoblocking. Trump's side countered that the film was available on the BritBox streaming platform, and could potentially have been viewed by Florida residents using a virtual private network (VPN) service.
"Trump’s legal team will be aware that Grand National-style hurdles lie ahead for the US President before any trial gets underway," Marks wrote. "The lawsuit’s failure to identify a Florida viewer who either complained about the documentary in the immediate aftermath of its transmission or changed their vote as a result of seeing the film could prove to be the complaint’s Achilles heel. Further, the US Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech applies to all the speakers interviewed in the documentary, and past evidence suggests that Florida judges may not be impressed by the lawsuit’s grandiose claims..."
Marks further noted that a prior Trump defamation suit against the*New York Times*, to the tune of $15 billion, was tossed out by a Florida judge.
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an 11 25
President Donald Trump was recently handed another loss in court, after failing to convince a Florida judge that he was owed money by the Guardian newspaper for reporting on a federal investigation involving his company.
Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell reported Monday on the ruling by Judge Hunter W. Carroll of Florida's Twelfth Judicial Circuit, who is an appointee of then-Gov. Rick Scott (R). Carroll granted an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion the Guardian filed, which defendants often file when alleging a lawsuit has been filed with the intent of intruding on First Amendment rights.
Additionally, Lowell reported that Judge Carroll found that reporting critical of Trump and his businesses could not be used by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which is the parent company of his Truth Social platform, to demonstrate actual malice in litigation.
TMTG sued over a 2023 article in the Guardian, in which the paper reported on a federal investigation into the company by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). TMTG had accepted $8 million in emergency loans from shadowy entities it knew little about at the time it accepted the money. One loan for $2 million came from Paxum Bank, which is headquartered in the island nation of Dominica. The other $6 million loan came from an entity called E.S. Family Trust.
The Guardian reported at the time that one of the trustees of E.S. Family Trust was a director of Paxum Bank. And one of the bank's part-owners had ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. SDNY prosecutors were probing whether the loans violated federal money laundering laws.
According to that report, one of the executives of TMTG floated the idea of returning the money given the lack of details and transparency about who was providing the loans. TMTG co-founder Will Wilkerson — who eventually became a whistleblower in the federal investigation — told SDNY that Chief Financial Officer Phillip Juhan was uncomfortable about the murky nature of the two entities.
The $2 million from Paxum Bank was sourced in December of 2021 by Patrick Orlando, who was executive at Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which was the entity TMTG merged with when the company went public. Orlando charged a $240,000 finders' fee for the loan, which was sourced through an offshore bank. Donald Trump Jr. ultimately signed off on the loan, per the report.
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an 11 25
An appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss President Donald Trump's years-old $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, deeming it "unpersuasive" and "meritless," reports *The New Republic*.
Trump sued the cable news network in 2022, for using the term “the Big Lie” in its coverage of "Trump’s debunked claims of sweeping election fraud that supposedly robbed him of a second term in the White House in 2020," The New Republic writes.
“Trump has not adequately alleged the falsity of CNN’s statements. Therefore, he has failed to state a defamation claim,” wrote 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Adalberto Jordan, Kevin Newsom, and Elizabeth L. Branch in an eight-page filing.
“Trump’s other arguments are likewise meritless," the judges wrote.
Trump nominated both Newsom and Branch, as well as District Judge Raag Singhal, who first dismissed the case in July.
Trump also accused CNN of using “the Big Lie” to create a “false and incendiary association” between him and "Adolf Hitler, who originally coined the term in Mein Kampf," The New Republicexplains, "But the lower court ruled that “bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.”
The panel of appeals court judges ruled that Trump’s argument was “unpersuasive,” because the term “Big Lie” did not "constitute a statement of fact," they report.
“This assumption is untenable,” the judges wrote, adding that "Trump’s argument hinges on the fact that his own interpretation of his conduct — i.e., that he was exercising a constitutional right to identify his concerns with the integrity of elections — is true and that CNN’s interpretation — i.e., that Trump was peddling his ‘Big Lie’ — is false. However, his conduct is susceptible to multiple subjective interpretations, including CNN’s."
This is the latest in a series of failed lawsuits Trump has issued against media companies reporting on his lies, including a $15 billion defamation suitagainst The New York Times that was dismissed in September.
“We have held that, by using ‘Big Lie’ to describe Trump, CNN was not publishing a false statement of fact. Therefore, whether CNN used ‘Big Lie’ one time or many is irrelevant to the question of falsity,” the judges said.
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RWW
10/22/2025
by
- Elijah Schaffer says that women serving as pastors is "the infantalization of God": "I don't understand how you can be a lesbian pastor. I understand how you can be a lesbian: you just get molested when you're younger."
- Doug Billings declares that former President Barack Obama sought to "fundamentally transform America away from the divine providence of God and the intent of the Founding Fathers": "That was the most anti-American sentiment that any president has ever uttered."
- Lana Lokteff is thrilled that "white girls are saying ni**er on the internet."
- Nate Schatzline is using his new podcast to spread right-wing disinformation.
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AN 10 25
President Donald Trump wants a federal judge to allow his defamation suit against The Wall Street Journalto go forward because he says the newspaper's 2003 letter linking him to the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was “deliberate and malicious," Newsweekreports.
Trump also says he should be allowed to continue the case because the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper said his denial of the letter's legitimacy was 'false."
Newsweekreports that in a filing submitted October 20 in the Southern District of Florida, Trump’s lawyers said the Journaland its parent company, News Corp., along with Murdoch and senior editors, “prioritize gossip, clicks and profit over truth.”
Donald Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch in July over a story regarding a birthday letter Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. That article was titled “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.”
In September, The Wall Street Journal filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, asserting that its reporting was accurate.
The October filing responds to Trump's motion to dismiss the suit, and asserts the newspaper’s reporting was substantially true and protected by the First Amendment.
The president accuses the Journalof framing its coverage to make his denial appear untrue, Newsweekexplains.
“Although defendants included plaintiff’s denial, they did so in a way that made it seem as if plaintiff’s denial was false,” the filing states. “This kind of reckless disregard for the truth by defendants provides a sufficient basis for an inference of actual malice.”
Trump’s legal team also argues "the article was defamatory both per se— because it allegedly subjected him to 'hatred, disgust, ridicule, contempt or disgrace' — and per quod, requiring additional context to show harm to his reputation," Newsweek says.
The filing says the piece “wrongly and inextricably link[ed] President Trump to the disgraced Epstein,” and that the Journal’s use of phrases such as “one of them was Donald Trump” left readers with the impression that he was a willing participant in the birthday project.
Trump's attorneys also accuse the Journal of not being nice to the president.
"They claim the story’s 'mean-spirited tone' and the Journal’s alleged hostility toward Trump support an inference of malice," Newsweek says.
The Journal's lawyers have laughed off Trump's requests, saying, “This meritless lawsuit threatens to chill the speech of those who dare to publish content that the president does not like.”
Legal experts agree that theJournal has the upper hand here.
“In the case of The Wall Street Journal, it would literally have to be the case that they knew the letter was false or knew it didn’t exist or they had a really good reason to suspect it was forged but ignored it," Shawn Trier, a constitutional-law expert told ABC News
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AN GUK 10 25
Legal filings resulting of a defamation lawsuit reveal Fox News employees were wringing their hands over their company’s fawning support of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
The Guardian collected employees’ statements from a 771-page filing released last week, made public as part of a defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic. The comments came from an anonymous internal survey of 1,040 employees conducted between August 2020 and early September 2020.
According to the Guardian, one employee said Fox should “change the misogynist, racist, rightwing content”, adding: “Fox News is a propaganda machine for the Republican party NOT a news organization and should be acknowledged as such. It is embarrassing to tell people that I work here as even conservatives know [Fox News Channel] and [Fox Business Network] are biased information sources — not news.”
Other employees complained the news content at the company is “hateful and has made the world a more divided and angry place.”
“I sometimes go home fighting back tears,” another employee said. “This network made me question my morals. Have I sold my soul to the devil?”
Still another employee pointed out that the network should “get out of Trump’s pocket” and realize that its most prominent hosts, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, “are a total embarrassment, peddling BS and conspiracy theories.”
“Many days I feel like I am part of the problem and FNC is contributing to hatred in this country,” the anonymous contributor added.
The complaints of rampant bias continued with another employee ranting: “This company aligns itself with the current administration and has lost its integrity.”
A different survey respondent complained, “I wish there was purpose for what we do other than pushing the brand, ideology and political will of [the president].”
Other employees wished management would crack down on “conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric” spewed by opinion hosts like hosts like Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, while one asked management for “a commitment from opinion hosts/producers to only tell viewers the truth, and to bolster their arguments with hard, proven facts given in full context, rather than spin or reckless conjecture that causes harm to real people.”
Smartmatic’s lawsuit against Fox claims Fox “lied and knowingly spread falsehoods about Smartmatic’s role in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.” The company told Guardian reporters that it believes the employee criticisms provide evidence that Fox executives were on notice of internal concerns about what the network was airing. The company has also argued that Fox’s board of directors failed to act on the results of the survey, which it said provided a “stark warning” about the network’s programming.
Newsmax has already settled a similar defamation suit with Smartmatic over the 2020 election.
Read the full Guardian report at this link.
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AN 8 25
The New York Post reportsHunter Biden does not appear intimidated by lawsuit threats from first lady Melania Trump.
“F—— that. That’s not going to happen,” Biden said during a Thursday interview on the YouTube show ."
“I don’t believe in guilt by association alone, but the connections are … so glaringly obvious that I think they’re trying to use other things to distract,” Biden continued. “And I also think they’re bullies, and they think that a billion dollars if gonna scare me.”
READ MORE: 'That's how this ends': George Conway reveals 'the only way' to stop Trump's 'gangsterism'
Melania Trump threatened to sue Biden for $1 billion if he doesn’t retract statements linking her to accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. She took issue with comments Biden referenced claiming Epstein introduced the first lady to now-President Donald Trump. Melania Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito claimed Biden’s statements are false, defamatory and “extremely salacious,” which are causing the first lady “to suffer overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”
But Biden says he’s repeating information from other sources.
“What I said was what I have heard and seen, reported and written, primarily from Michael Wolff, but also dating back all the way to 2019 when the New York Times, I think … reported that sources said that Jeffrey Epstein claimed to be the person to introduce Donald Trump to Melania at that time,” Biden said in the interview that attracted Trump’s attention.
Trump’s lawyers have had recent success in pushing for retractions, reports The New York Post. Her team issued similar threats to the Daily Beast, which retracted an article, and it pressed Democratic strategist James Carville to apologize and retract a podcast episode in which he speculated there was an “Epstein connection” involving the first lady.
READ MORE: This shocking and atrocious Republican scheme deserves only one response
But Biden said in his video that he is eager to get to the deposition phase of the Trumps’ suit.
“If they want to sit down for a deposition and clarify the nature of their relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and the first lady and the president — if they want to do that, and all the known associates around them at the time they met — I’m more than happy to provide them the platform to do it,” Biden said.
Watch the video below or at this link.
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an 7 25
former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California) hasn't been shy about filing defamation lawsuits that many legal experts considered frivolous according to the standards outlined in U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan. In April 2023, U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams threw out a Nunes lawsuit against Esquire. And in 2020, Judge John Marshall ruled that Nunes couldn't sue two parody accounts on X, formerly Twitter (one of which was named Devin Nunes' Cow and mocked him from the perspective of a fictional cow).
Nunes also sued NBC/Universal in response to comments from top-rated host Rachel Maddow. But on Friday, August 1, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel dismissed that lawsuit, ruling that Nunes failed to show actual malice.
In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Warren Court ruled that libel has to involve actual malice — a ruling that, 61 years ago, countless journalists and legal experts hailed as a major victory for the First Amendment and freedom of the press.
READ MORE: Don't 'have any other choice': Outrage grows in the midwest as political crisis spirals
Castel's ruling is generating a lot of comments on X, formerly Twitter.
Reuters Jonathan Landay noted that Nunes' lawsuit involved "a comment by Rachel Maddow about his dealings with a suspected Russian agent."
X user EJW commented, "Perpetual Loser Nunes — loses again."
Another X user, Sadie NYC, wrote, "Sucks to be you dude. Trump Media CEO Nunes loses defamation lawsuit over Rachel Maddow show."
READ MORE:'Middle-aged Manson girls': Far-right 'bloodthirsty' MAGA women mocked in scathing take-down
Politico's Josh Gerstein observed, "BREAKING: Judge tosses fmr Rep. Nunes' libel suit re MSNBC report on handling of package from Russia-linked legislator. Maddow & producer said they relied on POLITICO report suggesting Nunes sat on package, didn't see later 1 saying he gave it to FBI."
X user Bill Thatcher wrote, "@DevinNunes Such an insecure little weenie. Did she hurt your little feelings?! Devin, the continuing poster boy for thin-skin, low IQ, politically deaf white boys."
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RWW
7 25
- Sarah K. Burris @ Raw Story: First lady of France sues right-wing firebrand Candace Owens over claims she's a man
First Lady Brigitte Macron is suing right-wing firebrand Candace Owens for a “relentless and unjustified smear campaign” that alleges Macron is secretly a man.
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: California’s Gavin Newsom sues Fox News, seeking a very specific amount of money
The Democratic governor is seeking more than $787 million — and if that figure sounds at all familiar, there’s a good reason for that.
ref
Trump’s condemnations of the nation’s free press are painfully routine, though the president has been a bit more hysterical than usual this week, and there’s no great mystery as to why.
Two days after the Republican declared that U.S. military strikes had “completely and totally obliterated” Iranian nuclear sites, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency completed a preliminary intelligence assessment that found the airstrikes were less effective than Trump claimed. A great many news organizations, naturally, shared that information with the public after the assessment was leaked to reporters.
Trump and his team lashed out wildly, not only because of the leak, but because independent media outlets reported the news. In fact, on Wednesday, Trump’s personal lawyer threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN, claiming that the newspaper and the network damaged the president’s reputation by running reports that Trump considers, among other things, “false” and “unpatriotic.”
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of such an odd threat, but as it turns out, the Republican isn’t the only political leader targeting a media outlet under related circumstances. NBC News reported:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, accusing host Jesse Watters of defamation by falsely claiming that Newsom had lied about a phone call with President Donald Trump during a dispute over the use of the National Guard in Los Angeles. The lawsuit ... claims that Fox ‘operates as a propaganda machine for President Trump’s radical right-wing agenda.’
Politico was first to report on the suit.
The Democratic governor is seeking more than $787 million — and if that seemingly unusual figure sounds at all familiar, it’s because that’s roughly the amount of money the network paid in 2023 to settle a defamation case filed by Dominion Voting System.
Or put another way, Newsom and his lawyers engaged in a bit of political trolling when they chose this specific dollar amount.
“By disregarding basic journalistic ethics in favor of malicious propaganda, Fox continues to play a major role in the further erosion of the bedrock principles of informed representative government,” the lawsuit states. “Setting the record straight and confronting Fox’s dishonest practices are critical to protecting democracy from being overrun by disinformation and lies.”
The incident that sparked the litigation came earlier this month. On June 10, a reporter asked Trump when he’d last spoken to Newsom, and the president replied, “A day ago.” The Californian quickly responded that he had no idea what Trump was talking about, adding that the two had no interactions on June 9.
The president later clarified that he was off by a couple of days in his initial comments, and the story (such as it was) faded from view.
But on Fox News, the story unfolded a little differently. In fact, on June 10, after airing an edited clip of the president, Watters told viewers, “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” The on-screen text read at the time: “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”
In reality, the governor didn’t say that Trump “never called him”; he said Trump’s claim about a June 9 call was wrong, and on that point, the president himself soon after conceded that Newsom was correct.
“If Fox News fails to issue a formal retraction and on-air apology, we will proceed with the lawsuit so that a jury can determine Fox News’s culpability and assign a monetary value to its ‘blatantly unethical’ conduct,” the governor’s lawyers Michael Teter and Mark Bankson wrote in a letter.
Fox added in a statement of its own: “Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed.”
As a legal matter, Newsom faces a tough challenge. As Politico’s report noted, “Public officials must clear an extremely high legal standard to prevail in defamation cases, as the U.S. Supreme Court established six decades ago in New York Times v. Sullivan.”
Watch this space.
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AN 6 25
Donald Trump’s second term is shaping up to be just as much about the past as the future. Not the past as it unfolded, but the version of events as he wants them remembered.
*This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
There are a few troubling examples of how the president and his allies are actively attempting to reshape public views of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — and how these efforts are starting to affect real people and real institutions.
Take Oklahoma. Teachers there are now facing updated social studies standards that instruct students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results” — not to examine election systems or to discuss voter confidence, but to presume that the election was flawed.This language is a quiet but profound distortion: It accepts Trump’s false narrative of fraud and requires educators to teach that falsehood as fact.
This illustrates the insidious consequences of partisan narratives hardening into policy. Oklahoma’s education chief, Ryan Walters, has aligned himself with efforts to eliminate so-called left-wing indoctrination in schools. But he’s supporting these new standards, which contradict the facts made plain in every credible post-election review, from Trump’s own first-term Department of Justice to GOP-led audits. Courts, including those with Trump-nominated judges, rejected dozens of spurious legal challenges, and officials in every state certified the results.
These facts have been sidelined in shaping what schoolchildren learn, which has long-term implications for public trust in elections.
Or consider the protests against aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. Trump has called the demonstrators there “insurrectionists” and is moving military forces into the city.
And what about the convicted insurrectionists who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol? Trump issued them pardons and commutations as one of the first acts of his second term, erasing the crimes and violence of that day — including threats to execute his vice president — from the historical record. (A plaque honoring law enforcement officials who defended the Capitol that day still hasn’t been installed, despite pleas to House Speaker Mike Johnson.)
Trump’s administration is also reportedly developing a plan to pardon the “fake electors” and other Trump allies charged or convicted in connection with attempts to overturn the election, as well as the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, as part of a broader effort to shield MAGA supporters from legal consequences, and perhaps convey the sense that these events never happened.
That is, the president is using both his immense influence and his constitutional authority to bend justice, public education, and public memory toward a false understanding of the past. And his allies are bending to his will.
What does this tell us about Trump’s capacity to reshape perceptions in the face of actual facts? And can anything stand in his way?
Some answers may come from a federal courtroom in Denver, where one of the more surreal chapters of the 2020 fallout is still playing out. That’s where the defamation trial against Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — brought by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer — is underway.
Lindell, who has claimed that Dominion and Coomer were part of a scheme to steal the election from Trump, once promised that this trial would prove him right. But his lawyers seem to be arguing now that he’s so erratic, so impulsive, that nothing he says could be taken seriously enough to count as defamation.
“It’s just words,” said Lindell’s attorney, according to a Denver reporter covering the trial. “All Mike Lindell did was talk.”
That’s a hell of a defense, and itself a rewriting of history. The problem with it is that millions of people did believe Lindell, and still do.
Coomer may get to clear his name in the case against Lindell, but the broader effort to rewrite the past is gaining ground where it matters most: in classrooms, in Congress, and in the minds of voters. Juries and the judiciary can punish lies, but they can’t reach every classroom or undo every pardon.
With so many institutional guardrails already buckling under pressure, the remaining checks are public memory, a free press, and a willingness — from enough of us — to keep insisting on saying what actually happened.
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica atjhuseman@votebeat.org.}:
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
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an 6 25
:{:{Almost four and one-half months into Donald Trump's second presidency, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is still facing a civil defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for falsely claiming that their equipment was used to help Democrat Joe Biden steal the United States' 2020 election from Trump — a claim that was repeatedly debunked by countless recounts. }:
And the far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist is still angry over claims that his pillows are "lumpy" — so angry that, during an appearance on Steve Bannon's "War Room" vodcast, he threatened to bring one of them to his trial when it gets underway on Monday morning, June 2.}:
Lindell told Bannon, "Yeah, you guys, MyPillow and myself Monday morning, (June 2),the trial starts," Lindell explained. "MyPillow's being sued, everybody. By the way, Steve, this is the same lawyer that, in the deposition, called my pillows lumpy. I told my lawyers, maybe I should bring him one inside. He said: Mike, let's not go there."
Lindell's threat to bring a pillow to his civil defamation trial is getting some reactions on X, formerly Twitter.
READ MORE: 'Mass delusion fueled by charisma': Expert explains why Trump's followers still believe in him
Dinesh D'Souza, another far-right conspiracy theorist who promoted false claims about the 2020 election, is praising Lindell.
D'Souza tweeted, "Guys! Mike Lindell is fighting a big case involving election fraud. This guy has put his company on the line. Let’s support him big time. All kinds of great deals on the famous pillows, the Giza dream sheets and more! Go to http://mypillow.com and use promo code DSOUZA."
Christian fundamentalist Craig Scoullar posted, "God will give Mike victory."
But other X users are mocking Lindell.
READ MORE:'Disappointed': Musk says Trump's bill 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing'
Flatulence Studios' Chris Baldassano posted, " You have to appreciate just how bats--- Mike Lindell is. He's like the neighbor who you go outside and they are sunbathing in a tiny french speedo with not a care in the world..
X user Don Dank referenced Lindell's history of substance abuse problems, noting that he was a "drug addict" in the past.
Boston Democrat Tom Williams posted, "Mike Lindell wants pillows at voting machine trial to prove they aren't 'lumpy.'"
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an 4 25
Attorney General Pam Bondi just made a significant escalation in the feud between President Donald Trump's administration and the federal judiciary — and she's hoping to enlist the Supreme Court to the White House's side.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Bondi made it clear she didn't appreciate having to abide by a lower court order in a memorandum sent to various heads of federal agencies. The memo was written as part of an order from U.S. District Judge John D. Bates (an appointee of former President George W. Bush) instructing Bondi and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to tell agencies they were prohibited from implementing parts of an executive order Trump handed down targeting the law firm Jenner & Block.
In Trump's initial executive order, he prohibited the firm's attorneys from entering government buildings (a virtual impossibility for lawyers who practice in Washington D.C.), stripped attorneys of security clearances and imposed various other sanctions. The Janner & Block executive order is part of a pattern of other related orders explicitly targeting law firms that worked for Trump's political opponents.
READ MORE:'The gun was at his head': Here's why Trump really 'capitulated' to market pressure
The attorney general didn't mince words for the "unelected" judge who authored the decision, which she said "invaded the policy-making and free speech prerogatives of the executive branch." She also notably expressed hope that the Supreme Court would step in and explicitly allow the administration to sidestep lower courts.
"Local district judges lack this authority, and the Supreme Court should swiftly constrain these judges’ blatant overstepping of the judicial power," Bondi wrote.
While some law firms cut deals with the administration in order to roll back his orders, other firms — like Janner & Block — sued to prevent the orders from going into effect. Janner & Block was one of three firms that found success in their litigation against the White House. WilmerHale and Perkins Coie were also targeted and successfully fought back in the courts.
Bondi's memo comes as the Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to ignore orders from federal judges striking down Trump's policies and enlist the High Court in its fight. When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the return of an immigrant the administration admitted was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, the administration appealed to the Supreme Court. The 6-3 conservative supermajority halted the deadline imposed by Boasberg to bring the man back to the United States, and allowed the administration to continue deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
NOW READ:Donald Trump's new policies are 'stupid' — according to stupidity researchers
Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).
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4 25 politico
by Adam Cancryn, Maggie Miller, James Romoser and Kyle Cheney
04/09/2025
President Donald Trump is targeting two former first-term appointees over their criticism of his actions, stripping their security clearances and opening federal probes of their tenures.
The directives that Trump signed on Wednesday order the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs, who ran Trump’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and former senior Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor.
The two critics are the latest to be swept up in Trump’s expansive retribution campaign, where he’s sought to use federal powers in unprecedented ways to punish political opponents, law firms, universities and others that he believes have wronged him.
A president ordering investigations of specific individuals whom he considers to be his political enemies is a remarkable breach of the traditional wall of separation between the White House and the Justice Department. Under that norm of separation, criminal investigations are supposed to be insulated from political pressure, but Trump has repeatedly scorned the notion of DOJ independence. Making Wednesday’s action even more remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, is that Trump used the formal power of executive orders to effectively brand two individuals as subjects of criminal investigations.
Krebs, who was the administration’s top cybersecurity official responsible for election security, wasfired by Trump via tweet after he had asserted shortly after President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 that “in every case of which we are aware, these claims [of fraud] either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” He had also authorized a joint statementby CISA and other stakeholder groups that said the election was secure and that there was no indication of votes being changed or stolen, which angered Trump.
He was also akey witness for the Jan. 6 select committee, describing his efforts to secure the 2020 election and rebut conspiracy theories about the election and shore up voters’ confidence in the results. In his interview, he lamented that Republican leaders had catered to the false notion that the election was stolen, creating a “self-reinforcing cycle” of doubt. “Republican officials, senior officials, including the former President, lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election,” he told the panel.
The order signed by Trump labeled Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.” As he signed the order on Wednesday stripping Krebs’ security clearance and opening an investigation into his activities, Trump repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged.”
“It was proven by so many different ways in so many different forms,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out about this guy too, because this guy is a wise guy.”
Krebs is currently the chief intelligence and public policy officer at cybersecurity company SentinelOne. The order signed by Trump also takes aim at his current colleagues, suspending any security clearances held by individuals at SentinelOne who work with Krebs.
A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to request for comment.
In another move stemming from Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, the president on Wednesday signed a separate order imposing new limits on the law firm Susman Godfrey. The firm represented voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and other Trump associates who falsely claimed the election was rigged.
Taylor authored a high-profile anonymous op-ed in 2018 that criticized Trump and offered a scathing firsthand account of his decision-making. He later authored a book portraying the chaos inside the Trump White House, before revealing his identity and endorsing then-candidate Biden in the days before the 2020 election.
Trump on Wednesday called Taylor a “traitor,” even as he insisted that the former DHS chief of staff played a minimal role in his first administration.
“I barely remember him. Somebody that went out and wrote a book and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies,” Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday. “I think he’s guilty of treason.”
Taylor left the Trump administration in 2019. On Wednesday, Taylor said Trump’s decision to target him was a sign the country was headed down “a dark path.”
“I said this would happen,”he posted on X. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”
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Aug 15, 2023
For the last 20 years, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that his social media company is the “digital equivalent of a town square,” committed to factual accuracy, and protecting the natural environment.
But now, Facebook is censoring accurate information about the relationship between industrial wind energy development and the increase in whale deaths off the East Coast.
Yesterday, Facebook and Instagram censored my post linking whale deaths to wind energy off the East Coast of the United States. The censorship came in the form of a “FactCheck.org” article from March 31, 2023, which relied entirely on U.S. government sources.
The censorship came on the exact same day that Public and Environmental Progress released anew documentary, “Thrown To The Wind,” which proves that the FactCheck.org article is false.
“Thrown To The Wind” presents powerful new scientific evidence that the wind industry is responsible for the increase in whale deaths and that U.S. government agencies are either covering up the evidence or have failed to do the research that is described in the film.
Facebook last year defended its censorship by saying its “fact-checks” are just “opinion” and thus immune from defamation lawsuits, like the one brought by former ABC News correspondent John Stossel.
But that means that Facebook is spreading disinformation. By “disinformation,” I mean information that the person knows to be false. Facebook knows its “fact checks” are just their “opinion.” Thus, labeling FactCheck.org, which in this case is simply repeating US government misinformation, as a “fact-checker” is disinformation.
And the consequences are serious. According to Facebook, “Each time a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, Facebook significantly reduces the content’s distribution … We … apply a warning label that links to the fact-checker’s article, disproving the claim.”
Why is that? Why is Facebook censoring accurate information and spreading disinformation? And how can we fight back?
Please subscribe now to support our investigative reporting, our fight against censorship, and our defense of the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whales.
Subscribe
Facebook’s Renewable Energy Investments...pix
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rww
Mark Robinson announced that he's dropping his lawsuit against CNN and says he has no intention of ever seeking public office again.
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AN 125
In late 2022, Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board, which, he claimed, defamed him by refusing to retract prizes it gave the New York Times and the Washington Post for their Russiagate reporting.
Trump, in the lawsuit, alleged that the Times and the Post defamed him in their articles and that the Pulitzer Prize Board, by awarding them, defamed him as well. Many Trump critics attacked the lawsuit as frivolous, pointing out that the Pulitzer Prize Board itself didn't write the articles he claimed were defamatory.
Now, according to CNN and Mediaite, the Pulitzer Prize Board is fighting the lawsuit by "using Trump's own legal arguments against him."
READ MORE: 'Stakes really couldn't be higher' as 'tumultuous moment' heads for the Supreme Court
CNN's Hadas Gold reports, "In their motion filed on Monday, (January 27), the Pulitzer Board pointed out that Trump previously sought stays in other civil lawsuits where he was the defendant, saying the suits should be halted while he is in office because of questions of whether the U.S. Constitution bars state courts from exercising jurisdiction over…. a sitting president."
Gold notes that "for years," Trump "demanded the Pulitzer Board rescind the 2018 prize, arguing that he had been exonerated by special counsel Robert Mueller's 2019 report."
"Following Trump’s demands," Gold explains, "the Pulitzer Board commissioned two independent reviews of the awards, issuing a statement in 2022 that read in part: 'No passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.' It was that statement that prompted Trump to file his defamation suit against the (Pulitzer Prize) Board, choosing to file it in Florida because one member of the Board is a Florida resident."
Mediaite's David Gilmour points out that the Pulitzer Prize Board is "flipping President Donald Trump's own legal arguments on their head in an attempt to pause his defamation lawsuit against them."
READ MORE:[Apocalypse Now: Extreme interpretation of Christian nationalism now guides Pentagon policy
"The Pulitzer Board's argument essentially repurposes Trump's own defense tactics to shield themselves from litigation while his case is active," Gilmour observes. "While federal criminal charges against Trump are on hold due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents, several civil suits are moving forward. These include the $500 million fraud judgment secured by New York Attorney General Letitia James and judgments won by E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation."
Gilmour adds, "Whether the legal move will halt Trump’s Pulitzer lawsuit remains to be seen."
see abc disney //
an 12 24
President-elect Donald Trump has been spending a bulk of his presidential transition less focused on putting together a governing agenda and more focused on an aggressive campaign of legal intimidation. Now, one of his supporters has identified his next potential target.
Politico is reporting that former Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich — who endorsed Trump in 2024 after receiving a pardon from him in 2020 — is calling on the president-elect to zero in on current Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Blagojevich tweeted that Trump should pursue the Illinois governor using the same tactic he successfully used against ABC News in a separate defamation lawsuit.
“Now that Trump successfully won his defamation case against ABC for calling him a ‘rapist,’ when will he sue Illinois Governor JB Pritzker for repeatedly lying & calling him the same thing?” Blagojevich wrote on X.
READ MORE:'Open season': Experts slam Trump's 'disgusting' lawsuit against Iowa newspaper and pollster
In a June tweet, Pritzer called Trump "a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and a congenital liar." He added that then-candidate Trump was "a racist, sexist, misogynistic narcissist who wants to use the levers of power to enrich himself and punish anyone who dares speak a word against him." Blagojevich's tweet may be a reference to that statement, or his comments in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump this summer, when he said the fact that Trump narrowly dodged a bullet didn't change the fact that he was "a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist."
The incoming president is fresh off of a legal victory in which ABC News agreed to make a $15 million contribution to Trump's presidential library fund in addition to another $1 million in legal expenses in order to settle with Trump over his defamation claim. The lawsuit was filed in response to ABC host George Stephanopoulos saying Trump was found guilty of "rape" in a 2023 verdict in favor of writer E. Jean Carroll. The actual verdict wasn't for rape, but for "sexual abuse."
In a subsequent filing, Judge Lewis F. Kaplan clarified that "sexual abuse" was essentially the same thing as "rape" as the average person understands it, and that Trump was indeed guilty. He was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million for sexual abuse, and then another $83.3 million for defaming her when falsely asserting that she made the story up for financial benefit.
Trump has also filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and retired pollster Ann Selzer for a poll that falsely predicted Vice President Kamala Harris would win Iowa by three points. Trump argued that the poll was a form of election interference, even though he ended up winning Iowa by a double-digit margin.
READ MORE:Trump calls for 'dishonest' ABC News to lose license following debate fact-check
*Click here to read Politico's report in full.
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see courts 4 defam rudy and jones
Will Neal @ The Daily Beast](https://www.thedailybeast.com/alex-jones-says-infowars-might-be-shut-down-unless-good-guys-buy-platform-at-auction/): Alex Jones Says InfoWars May Soon Be Finally Shut Down
A glimmer of good news amid all the doom, Alex Jones’ reign of online terror may soon be over with a court-mandated auction to sell off his assets now fast approaching.
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d’souza admitted 2k mules BS
huffpo
Dinesh D’Souza — the conservative filmmaker behind the widely debunked conspiracy film “2000 Mules” — apologized to a Georgia man accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election and admitted the documentary relied on “inaccurate information.”
The film, released in 2022, became a rallying cry for many conservatives for years, who claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 race was stolen from Donald Trump. Trump himself praised the film, which pointed to cellphone location data filmmakers said suggested ballot “mules” were paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in key swing states that voted for Joe Biden during that race.
Experts and election official from both parties quickly debunked those claims, but D’Souza vehemently defended his work for years. But he issued a mea culpa over the weekend saying he had recently learned the cell phone evidence didn’t support the “mule” theory.
“We recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data,” D’Souza said.
“I know that the film and my book create the impression that these individuals were mules that had been identified as suspected ballot harvesters … ” he went on. “While all of these individuals’ images were blurred and unrecognizable, one of the individuals has since come forward publicly and has initiated a lawsuit over the use of his blurred image in the film and the book. I owe this individual, Mark Andrews, an apology.”
Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza apologized to a Georgia man accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election and admitted the documentary relied on “inaccurate information.” AP Photo/John Raoux, File© AP Photo/John Raoux, File
D’Souza said if he had known the true nature of the cell phone geolocation data, “I would have clarified this and produced and edited the film differently.”
“We operated in good faith and in reliance on True the Vote,” he said. “We continue to have confidence in their work and also in the basic message of ‘2000 Mules.’”
Related video: Dinesh D'Souza admits some claims of voter fraud were false in '2000 Mules' (MSNBC)
Cash Patel has consistently pushed false claims of voter fraud
Andrews, with his face blurred out, is seen in the film as he places ballots in a drop box in Georgia. A voiceover by D’Souza says the man is committing a crime, claiming he was depositing “fraudulent votes.”
The New York Times notes the state investigated that claim and found Andrews had legally cast ballots for himself and his family at the same address.
The man filed a lawsuit against D’Souza in 2022, which is ongoing. The case claims D’Souza and others named in the suit “knew that their portrayals of Mr. Andrews were lies, as was the entire narrative of ’2000 Mules.’”
“But they have continued to peddle these lies in order to enrich themselves,” lawyers for Andrews wrote,per The Associated Press. The case also notes that video used to promote the film includes unblurred images of Andrews and the license plate on his car.
True the Vote, a nonprofit that supplied the cellphone geolocation data, is also named in the suit. The group said Monday the main points of the film remain “accurate,” but said it had no editorial control over the the documentary’s message.
D’Souza said in his statement this month his apology was not related to a settlement or under any “duress … but because it is the right thing to do, given what we have now learned.”
“While I do not believe Mr. Andrews was ever identified by the film or book, I am sorry for any harm he believes he and his family has suffered as a result of ‘2000 Mules,’” D’Souza said.
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rww 12/04/2024
by
- Eric Metaxas has apologized for calling relatives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer a bunch of Jew-hating, Hamas-loving lunatics after they threatened to sue him.
- Michele Bachmann claims that the Democrats are in disarray because "they are now a lying brand," which is a confusing criticism given that pathological liar Donald Trump was just reelected.
- QAnon conspiracy theorist Dave Hayes (aka "The Praying Medic") warns that the "deep state" will try to keep Trump out of the White House because they know that if he gets into office, "they're all gonna end up in prison."
- Randall Terry plans to soon announce that he is running for Congress.
- Finally, Nick Fuentes has no problem with President Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter because Fuentes thinks that presidents and their families should be "above the law."
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an 11 24
Revenge—it’s a big part of Trump’s life,” Mother Jones‘ David Corn (10/19/16) wrote just before Trump was elected to the presidency the first time:
In speeches and public talks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”
Knowing this about Trump, Democrats and liberals worry that he will use the Department of Justice, especially if Matt Gaetz is confirmed as attorney general, as an unrestrained vehicle to pursue the prosecution of political enemies.
But given Trump’s constant attacks on media—“the opposition party,” as his ally Steve Bannon called the fourth estate (New York Times,1/26/17)—journalists fear that he will use the power of the state to intimidate if not destroy the press.
Defunding public broadcasting
Trump called for defunding NPR (Newsweek, 4/10/24) after a long-time editor accused the radio outlet of liberal bias in the conservative journal Free Press (4/9/24). Rep. Claudia Tenney (R–NY) introduced legislation to defund NPR because “taxpayers should not be forced to fund NPR, which has become a partisan propaganda machine” (Office of Claudia Tenney, 4/19/24). With Republicans also holding both houses of congress, bills like Tenney’s become more viable. Trump has previously supported budget proposals that eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Politico, 3/27/19).
The infamous Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda many see as a blueprint for the second Trump term, calls for the end to public broadcasting, because it is viewed as liberal propaganda:
> Every Republican president since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding. That is significant not just because it means that for half a century, Republican presidents have failed to accomplish what they set out to do, but also because Nixon was the first president in office when National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which the CPB funds, went on air.
In other words, all Republican presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake. As a 35-year-old lawyer in the Nixon White House, one Antonin Scalia warned that conservatives were being “confronted with a long-range problem of significant social consequences—that is, the development of a government-funded broadcast system similar to the BBC.”
All of which means that the next conservative president must finally get this done, and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary. To stop public funding is good policy and good politics. The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become “a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,” but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.
PBS and NPR, as FAIR (10/24/24) has noted, has for decades caved in to right-wing pressures—PBS by adding conservative programming, NPR by trying to rid itself of political commentary altogether. But the right will never let go of its ideological opposition to media outlets not directly owned by the corporate class.
‘Whether criminally or civilly’
Trump also has a well known track record of revoking the credentials of journalists who produce reporting he doesn’t like (Washington Post, 2/24/17, 5/8/19; New Republic, 11/5/24). It is realistic to assume that a lot more reporters will be barred from White House events in the years ahead.
While a bill that would grant the secretary of the treasury broad authority to revoke nonprofit status to any organization the office deems as a “terrorist” organization has so far failed (Al Jazeera, 11/12/24), it is quite possible that it could come up for a vote again. If this bill were to become law, the Treasury Department could use this ax against a great many progressive nonprofit outlets, like Democracy Now! and the American Prospect, as well as investigative outlets like ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The department could even target the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has already said in response to Trump’s victory, “The fundamental right to a free press, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, must not be impaired” (11/6/24).
Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 10/27/24), an avid media observer, said there is no reason to think Trump will soften his campaign against the free press. She said:
In 2022, he sued the Pulitzer Prize board after they defended their awards to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both newspapers had won Pulitzer Prizes for investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.
More recently, Trump sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for defamation over the way the anchor characterized the verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual misconduct case against him. Each of those cases is wending its way through the courts.
She added:
There is nothing to suggest that Trump would soften his approach in a second term. If anything, we can expect even more aggression.
Consider what one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, Kash Patel, has said.
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel threatened during a podcast with Steve Bannon. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
Trump has already gone after the New York Times and Penguin Random House since Sullivan wrote this. CJR (11/14/24) said:
The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”
And just before his victory, Trump sued CBS News, alleging the network’s “deceitful” editing of a recent 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris “misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him” (CBS News, 10/31/24).
Expect more of this, except this time, Trump will have all the levers of the state on his side. And whatever moves the next Trump administration makes to attack the press will surely have a chilling effect, which will only empower his anti-democratic political agenda.
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“The press freedom fire is at our door step now," saidone Washington Post journalist on Thursday night after news broke that two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office, he has already begun to wage legal warfare against on the news media.
The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)reported that days before the election, a lawyer for Trump, Edward Andrew Paltzik, sent a letter toThe New York Times and Penguin Random House demanding $10 billion in damages for publishing articles and a book that were critical of the president-elect, who was convicted of 34 felony counts earlier this year.
Trump's legal team took issue with a book by Times journalists Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner titled Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. They also said they were demanding damages over "false and defamatory statements" in the October 20 article "For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment" by Peter Baker and the October 22 piece "As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator"by Michael Schmidt.
The former article covered numerous wrongdoings by the president-elect and accusations against him, pointing out that he "is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges, and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact)," and that he has also boasted about sexually assaulting women and spearheaded numerous businesses that went bankrupt.
The latter article detailed comments by Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, who told the Times that the definition of fascism accurately describes Trump.
The president-elect himself said while campaigning that he planned to govern as a dictatoronly on "Day One"of his term in office.
"Governments and powerful figures threatening journalists and media outlets with costly legal battles and bankruptcy is a common tactic against press freedom in repressive countries."
Paltzik told the newspaper that the articles demonstrate the Times' "intention of defaming and disparaging the world-renowned Trump brand that consumers have long associated with excellence, luxury, and success in entertainment, hospitality, and real estate, among many other industries, as well as falsely and maliciously defaming and disparaging him as a candidate for the highest office in the United States."
TheCJR reported that theTimes responded to Paltzik's letter, telling him the newspaper stood by its reporting on Trump.
As Barry Malone, deputy editor-in-chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation,saidon social media on Friday, Trump's legal threats may be designed not to actually win billions of dollars in damages but "to tie the media up with time-consuming and often prohibitively expensive cases."
The Timesand Penguin Random House threats were reported two weeks after Trump suedCBS News for another $10 billion, claiming an interview with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the November 5 election, was unfairly edited to present her in a positive light and qualified as "election interference."
CBS said it would "vigorously defend" its journalistic practices and called the lawsuit "completely without merit"—a similar response to the one by The Washington Post, which was accused by Trump on the same day of making an illegal in-kind donation to Harris.
Anne Champion, an attorney who has represented several journalists and CNN in legal cases initiated by Trump, told the CJR that the legal threats will likely have "a mental chilling effect" on reporters and news outlets in the United States as Trump prepares to take office.
"It is both conscious and unconscious," said Champion. "Journalists at smaller outlets know very well that the costs for their organization to defend themselves could mean bankruptcy. Even journalists at larger outlets don't want to burden themselves or their employees with lawsuits. It puts another layer of influence into the journalistic process."
Trump has a longstanding disdain for the media, saying numerous times during his first term that journalists were the "enemy of the people." During one campaign rally just before the election he said he wouldn't "mind" if reporters at the event were shot, and he called the media the "enemy camp" during his victory speech last week.
During his first term he also threatened to "take a strong look at our country's libel laws"—which are actually controlled by states, not the federal government—and ensure that "when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts."
The American Civil Liberties Unionpointed outat the time that the First Amendment and the lack of federal libel laws would stand in Trump's way, but on Thursday Lachlan Cartwright wrote atCJR that "the drumbeat of legal threats signals a potentially ominous trend for journalists during Trump's second term in office."
AsWashington Post columnist Karen Attiah noted on the social media platform Bluesky, "governments and powerful figures threatening journalists and media outlets with costly legal battles and bankruptcy is a common tactic against press freedom in repressive countries."
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lincoln Project cofounder George Conway has jokingly offered to provide free legal services to the SuperPAC should former President Donald Trump follow through with his threat to sue the organization over an advertisement.
The “Failures” advertisement aired on Fox News last week. It accused Trump advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles of failing to foresee that President Joe Biden would drop out of the election.
“They told you that Biden should never quit — that you should spend all that time, all that money, so much money, focusing on Biden. How he’s too old,” an announcer reads during the ad. “Now it’s Harris. She’s younger than you — by a lot. Faster on her feet. Better than Biden was on camera. They were wrong. But they’re wrong a lot. Wrong that Vance would help you. You know he’s terrible. Wrong that you have the race sewn up. It’s sad, Donald. They spend more time trying to keep you under control than trying to win.”
On Friday, the Trump campaign sent the Lincoln Project a cease and desist letter, which the SuperPAC posted to Threads. Trump’s lawyer, David A. Warrington, claimed the “Failures” spot was defamatory to LaCivita, Wiles and the Trump campaign. Warrington said the ad’s claims “are a complete fabrication, and defame the Campaign’s leaders,” and “would harm the Campaign by discouraging future contributions.”
Tuesday morning the Lincoln Project confirmed that it would not be removing the “Failures” advertisement, and followed up with a new spot, “Futile.”
“This is the third time you’ve threatened to sue the Lincoln Project. This time, it’s because we told you the truth about how your campaign is failing, broken and dead in the water, wrong that you have the race sewn up. Sad, Donald. We told you, Chris and Susie made a mistake when they bragged that Biden would stay in the race. It’s embarrassing, Donald. Your whole campaign is a hot mess. You’re terrible on camera these days. You just look old, tired and [expletive] crazy America, America’s just done with you, Donald, and with the political team you have, there’s nothing you can do but, lose, lose, lose,” the announcer says in the new clip.
Conway shared “Futile” on Tuesday morning, along with a needling caption.
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the widely debunked documentary was mentioned in dozens of articles on The Gateway Pundit and pushed by conservative media figures including Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk
WRITTEN BY AUDREY MCCABE
PUBLISHED 06/05/24 10:51 AM EDT
Right-wing media conglomerate Salem Media has retracted and apologized for Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote’s conspiracy theory-laden “documentary” 2000 Mules after settling a lawsuit with a Georgia voter falsely accused by the film of committing fraud in the 2020 election.
Before halting distribution of the film and removing it from its platforms, Salem Media provided a platform to widely circulate its election integrity misinformation throughout the right-wing media ecosystem. Salem Media’s Charlie Kirk was featured in the documentary, and a search for the film name on The Gateway Pundit’s website yielded dozens of articles.
In May 2022, filmmaker D’Souza released 2000 Mules in partnership with “election integrity” group True the Vote and Salem Media. The film relies heavily on the use of cellphone geotracking, a faulty approach that reportedly fails to prove claims of ballot trafficking. (D’Souza also published a book version of 2000 Mules, which was recalled by the publisher soon after it hit bookstores and altered to retract certain allegations before its re-release. True the Vote claimed to have “had no participation in” the book.)
The documentary has been repeatedly debunked by law enforcement and the media, but right-wing media heavily promoted the film as supposed evidence of widespread voter fraud aimed at stopping former President Donald Trump from winning the 2020 presidential election.
Mark Andrews, a Georgia man falsely depicted as committing voter fraud in the film, sued D’Souza and his company, Salem Media, True the Vote and its founders Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips, and the book publisher. In a separate legal proceeding, a Fulton County Superior Court judge ordered True the Vote to provide evidence of voter fraud in Georgia, which the film asserted. True the Vote admitted in court that it did not have evidence substantiating its claims.
Salem Media recently settled in the suit, paying Andrews an undisclosed “significant” amount and issuing a formal apology. The outlet also claimed that it “relied on representations made to us by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote.” Engelbrecht claimed in a livestream that Salem retracted 2000 Mules only because of pressure from shareholders and advertisers, and True the Vote posted on X that it “stands by its processes and methodologies” and Salem’s settlement “does not change our [True the Vote’s] position.” D’Souza reposted the statement.
Right-wing media figures and outlets have pushed the film, using it to fuel claims that the 2020 election was stolen
- One America News regularly promoted the film around the 2022 midterm elections, devoting 58 hours of airtime to the film between October 15 and November 1. One America News figures also attended the Mar-a-Lago premiere, bizarrely weaved the film into unrelated segments about crime, and called it the “film of the century.” Host Dan Ball stated, “After watching this movie, I will say this: There’s not one doubt in my mind that this election was rigged, period.” Media Matters, [11/3/22, 5/11/22]
- The Daily Signal, The Published Reporter, and several GOP politicians ran ads on Meta promoting 2000 Mules, further spreading the film’s false claims.The Daily Signal’s ad features a quote from Phillips claiming that there was an “organized effort to subvert” the 2020 election. Meta prohibits ads that have been debunked by third-party fact-checkers, but Media Matters found 36 ads promoting the film. Media Matters, [5/6/22]
- Right-wing podcaster and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon invited Engelbrecht and Phillips onto War Room to promote the film, even after the group failed to provide evidence before the court. Bannon claimed that True the Vote was being targeted in an “organized media hit.” Media Matters, [2/20/24]
- Salem Media host and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk appeared in 2000 Mules and brought D’Souza, Engelbrecht, and Phillips on his show to promote the film. Kirk also partnered with D’Souza to host exclusive showings of the documentary. Media Matters, [5/4/22; CharlieKirk.com, 4/9/22]
- A search for “2000 Mules” on The Gateway Pundit’s website returned dozens of articles.The outlet claimed that the film “irrefutably confirms the widespread belief that Democrats stole the election in 2020.” The Gateway Pundit, [6/2/22]
- Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump attempted to make attorney general, has repeatedly praised 2000 Mules on X (formerly known as Twitter) and claimed that it revealed a “massive multi-State operation.” He promoted a Gateway Pundit article on Kirk’s interview with Engelbrecht and Phillips. Media Matters, [6/23/22]
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Hunter Biden plans lawsuit against Fox News amid 'conspiracy of disinformation' - Alternet.org
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Trump supporters at the Missouri Republican Caucus on Saturday attacked fellow attendees who supported the former president's opponent, a prior member of the "grand old party" reported.
Former Lincoln Project veterans affairs adviser Fred Wellman, an ex-Republican and current Democratic campaign consultant, reportedthe aggressive development on social media. Wellman also recently hit retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump adviser who played a prominent role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, with a sanctions bid in a defamation lawsuit.
On Saturday, Wellman conveyed information he said he received via text about the caucus in Missouri.
"I have a friend who attended the Missouri Republican Presidential Caucus today," he wrote Saturday. "They asked Nikki Haley supporters to line up in the middle of the auditorium and were booed and screamed at by the Trump supporters."
He continued: "They attacked fellow Republicans. Feel like democracy to you?"
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Quoting a reported follow-up text from the source, Wellman then said, "The woman who spoke for Haley couldn’t stop shaking and crying. It was so scary.”
Someone in the comments wrote to Wellman, "Those Dale Carnegie courses didn't take..." He responded, "Nope. Do you think those folks will vote for Trump in November?"
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arizona Republican US Senate Kari Lake on Tuesday decided against doubling down on remarks she made about Maricopa County top election official Stephen Richer — a Republican, who filed a suit against the failed gubernatorial candidate for defamation last June, The Washington Post reports.
The election official for Arizona's largest county shared an op-ed published by *The Arizona Republic* announcing his legal action last year, declaring that Lake "and her team should be held accountable for 'utter disregard for the truth and the harm their words have caused.'"
He wrote, "She has cast doubt on my loyalty to our country, our state and my office. She did this knowing that it would only throw gasoline on the fire of falsehoods about our elections. Lake has not sent me into hiding. Nor will she ever. But her defamatory statements have irrevocably altered my life, closed opportunities and damaged relationships."
READ MORE:Kari Lake sued for defamation by Republican Maricopa County official
The Donald Trump-supporting former newscaster had been trying "trying to get the lawsuit thrown out in court," but the Arizona Court of Appeals decided in January Richer's lawsuit would proceed.
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Per the Post, "Attorneys for Lake, her 2022 campaign for governor and an affiliated nonprofit group on Tuesday asked a judge to begin the process of determining damages as part of" the lawsuit, and the judge complied.
The Senate hopeful, according to the report, also has asked that the "judge set what is known as a default judgment hearing, which would essentially bypass the legal process for her to defend her comments. She instead wants the court to hold a hearing to determine whether damages are owed to Richer and, if so, the amount."
However, Lake did choose to air her grievances in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter). She "echoed rhetoric employed by Trump and called the case against her a 'political witch hunt,'" the Post reports, by comparing "the defamation case to the lawsuits Trump is facing, saying that those pursuing legal action 'know they can’t beat either of us fair and square, so they hit us with lawsuits to keep us tied up and off the campaign trail' and to 'try to stop me and bleed me dry.'"
READ MORE:Why Kari Lake is in 'deep, deep trouble' in GOP election official’s defamation lawsuit
An hour later, Richer called out Lake, writing, "It was a lie. It was always a lie. She did it to get your $25. Or to fire you up. But it was all a lie. There were no "300,000 fraudulent early ballots" etc. She defamed me. But she also lied to you."
When Richer announced the suit last year, the election official "explained that his wife had suffered considerably from the attacks on him, and there are now security concerns for her." He added, "A county election worker carries a gun to protect herself because she was stalked by people claiming she was 'stealing the election.'"
The Post reports, "Richer has asked the court to award him damages, attorneys’ fees and a public acknowledgment that the statements about him were untrue. He also wants Lake and her allies to remove all false information about him from their social media accounts and websites."
The Washington post's full report is availableat this link (subscription required).
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March 13, 2024
- Brandy Zadrozny @ NBC News: A small city in Oklahoma elected a white nationalist. Will it be able to vote him out?
Judd Blevins, a city commissioner in Enid, Oklahoma, marched in the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally. Now he faces a recall vote.
- Christopher Mathias @ HuffPost: He Didn’t Deny Being A White Supremacist. Then He Was Elected To City Council
Judson Blevins, a city commissioner in Enid, Oklahoma, won’t refute evidence tying him to a secretive fascist group. Does the city care enough to recall him from office?
- Colby Hall @ Mediaite: Trump Now Claiming ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Was Used By House Dems in ‘Cognitive Decline’ Gaffe Supercut
Former President Donald Trump has baselessly alleged that House Democrats used “Artificial Intelligence” to create a montage designed to show his lack of mental acuity, adding “‘Can’t do that Joe!!” on social media.
- Jeremy Childs @ Rolling Stone: RNC’s New Election Integrity Specialist Literally Wrote a Book Pushing the Big Lie
Former Trump attorney Christina Bobb, the new RNC counsel on election integrity, authored a book falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen.
- Roger Sollenberger @ The Daily Beast: ‘Make the RNC White Again’: GOP Ends Minority Outreach Program
With Trump allies taking over the RNC and cleaning house, one of the casualties was a minority outreach program that seemed to be working for Republicans.
- Kevin Drum @ Jabberwocking: Conservative judge shopping finally gets banned
The reason judge shopping works is that there are some jurisdictions with only one, or maybe two judges. File in the right place and you’re nearly guaranteed to get the Trump judge of your dreams.
- Colin Kalmbacher @ Law & Crime: Pro-Trump defamation attorney Lin Wood found liable for defaming his former law partners by accusing them of ‘criminal extortion’
Pro-Donald Trump defamation attorney L. Lin Wood was found liable for defaming his former law partners by a federal court on Tuesday.
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On February 8, climate scientist Michael Mann won a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers Rand Simberg and National Review contributor Mark Steyn. Steyn was once a regular presence on Fox News where he appeared more than 300 times between 2017 and 2021, both as a guest and a guest host.
According to The New York Times, in addition to finding them guilty of defaming Mann, “The jury also found the writers had made their statements with ‘maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm,’ and levied punitive damages of $1,000 against Mr. Simberg and $1 million against Mr. Steyn in order to deter others from doing the same.”
On February 9, Mann appeared on CNN News Central to discuss the outcome of the trial. During his interview Mann explained how these ideological and politically motivated attacks "chill the discourse” and discourage scientists from sharing their findings. Mann said he hoped the verdict will “create some space where scientists feel a little bit more … comfortable in leaving the laboratory, in communicating their findings to the public.”
Video
CitationFrom the February 9, 2024, edition of CNN News Central
BRIANNA KEILAR (ANCHOR) Michael, what do you worry is the effect on whether it's public health, or even global health, the health of our planet, which affects us all, when you have people making bogeymen out of scientists like yourself?
MICHAEL MANN: Well, I really worry about that, right? Especially young scientists, who see the attacks on scientists like myself, scientists like Anthony Fauci and my good friend Peter Hotez. They look at that, and that chills the discourse. That potentially leads them to sort of withdraw into their laboratories. They don't want to get involved, get into the fray, and to be part of the effort to communicate their scientific findings to the public, out of fear that they will be attacked, that they will be viciously attacked, again, by those who have vested interest in discrediting science that's inconvenient to their economic interests or their political viewpoints. And so this is a message to my fellow scientists, that, you know, that it is not OK for people to attack you, to make false allegations against you, to defame you.
And hopefully, that will create some space where scientists feel a little bit more, you know, that they're more comfortable in leaving the laboratory, in communicating their findings to the public, because we rely upon the best available science, as you said, both when it comes to our own health and the health of this planet. What could be more important than the health of our -- of us and, and our fellow human beings, and the planet that we live on? That's -- those are really the stakes here.
KEILAR: Yeah. We don't want there to be that chilling effect. Michael, great to have you.
While Mann is certainly one of the most prominent climate scientists to be in the crosshairs of right-wing media, he is far from alone. Attacks against climate scientists have been on the rise the last few years, especially on Elon Musk’s Twitter/X where many scientists have left the platform due to harassment.
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bad news for anti-vaxx extremist and "Democrat"-turned-independent spoiler presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: A federal judge just threw one of his bogus lawsuits out of court!
A quick recap in case you're just tuning in:
- A pseudonymous Daily Kos community writer wrote about RFK Jr.'s appearance at a COVID conspiracy rally hosted by a group with links to neo-Nazis. He sued Daily Kos to expose the writer's identity. We fought him in court.
- RFK Jr. discovered the writer's identity through other means and sued him for defamation. He just lost that suit, though he could appeal the decision.
- Along the way, RFK Jr. decided to run against President Biden for the Democratic nomination, became a "star" witness for House Republicans, used his new platform to push his quack conspiracy theories to new heights, and then dropped out of the primary to run as an independent.
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In 2023, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman — an infamous team of far-right MAGA conspiracy theorists — faced legal consequences for racist robocalls aimed at Black voters during the 2020 election. Prosecutors described the robocalls as a blatant attempt at voter suppression, and after pleading guilty to a felony count telecommunications fraud, they were given two years of probation and fined $2500 each in November.
Now, according to the Daily Beast's Justin Rohrlich, Wohl and Burkman are facing an $11 million lawsuit from a Maryland-based attorney and U.S. Marines veteran who says they falsely accused him of sexual misconduct.
In an article published on February 6, Rohrlich reports that the attorney "claims his life fell apart after Wohl and Burkman falsely tarred him in a 2021 video as a child sex predator, according to an $11 million racketeering lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast."
READ MORE:Pro-Trump conspiracy theorist accused of robocall voter suppression faces a massive fine
"In the aftermath," Rohrlich explains, "the unidentified Maryland man was let go from his law firm, lost a paid internship at Johns Hopkins University, was thrown out by his landlord, and forced him into bankruptcy, the lawsuit states. 'John Doe' contends, in the suit, that Wohl and his co-defendant, soon-to-be-disbarred lawyer Jack Burkman, caused 'irreparable harm' by laying waste to his reputation, wrecking his ability to earn a living, and turning him into a 'critical casualty' of their 'ongoing, illegal scheme.'"
The hardships the attorney suffered, according to the lawsuit, stem from the online series "Predator D.C."
Wohl and Burkman, Rohrlich notes, have a long history of making false accusations.
"In the fetid swamp of far-right politics," Rohrlich reports, "two names are infamous for having unleashed a torrent of particularly ludicrous stunts, lies, and scams. Among other things, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have lobbed phony sexual misconduct claims at former FBI director and Trump-era special counsel Robert Mueller, recruited a young Trump supporter to smear then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg as a rapist, and floated a preposterous tale that Sen. Elizabeth Warren was carrying on a kinky, BDSM-imbued extramarital affair with a 24-year-old soldier later found to have exaggerated his service record."
*Read the Daily Beast's full reportat this link (subscription required).
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former President Donald Trump was just handed another loss in court – this time in the United Kingdom.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that a judge in the UK ruled against the former president in his lawsuit against former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele and his intelligence firm, Orbis, which assembled a 2016 dossier alleging Trump and his campaign were compromised by Vladimir Putin's regime.
Trump filed the lawsuit seeking both compensation for "significant damage and distress" as well as a statement from the court that the allegations in the dossier were false. However, Judge Karen Steyn was unmoved by his argument, stating that the ex-president was "seeking court findings to vindicate his reputation in circumstances where has not been able to formulate any viable remedy which he would have a real prospect of obtaining."
The Steele dossier — commissioned by a firm contracting with the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign — famously included allegations that Trump paid Russian sex workers to urinate on a bed that former President Barack Obama had once slept on. Even though the media has since moved on, Trump has continued to revive the "golden showers" rumor on multiple occasions. New York Magazine reported that Trump insisted he was "not into golden showers" during a Senate Republican retreat, though no one had brought up the subject.
Late last year, as he was in and out of the courtroom for his civil fraud trial in New York, Trump again referenced the rumor on the campaign trail.
"It started with Russia, Russia, Russia, remember that?" Trump said. "He was with four hookers. You think that was good that night to go up and tell my wife, 'It's not true, darling, I love you very much. It's not true!' Actually, that one she didn’t believe, 'cause she said, 'He’s a germophobe; he’s not into that. He’s not into golden showers, as they say they called it, he’s not.'"
Orbis lawyers shrugged off Trump's unsuccessful lawsuit as a "vendetta" by a plaintiff with a penchant for "harassing perceived enemies and others against whom he bears a grudge."
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a Florida Republican’s bill aims to silence accusations of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, or any other allegations of discrimination, making them “defamation” under the law and potentially costing the person who made them up to $35,000 in the state known for its “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The sweeping legislation also appears to void journalists’ right to not reveal sources, and, chillingly removes the long-standing requirement that a public figure needs to show “actual malice” to win a defamation lawsuit.
“In cases of alleged homophobia or transphobia, defendants charged with defamation are not allowed to use the plaintiff’s religious or scientific beliefs as part of their defense. If they are found liable for defamation, the defendant could be fined at least $35,000,” The New Republic reports, noting it “would silence basically any accusations of discrimination.”
“The bill applies to statements made in print, on television, or on social media. It also states that someone who is caught in a viral video engaging in allegedly discriminatory behaviors does not qualify as a ‘public figure,’ giving those people even more grounds to sue.”
READ MORE: ‘You Have No Balls’: Nancy Mace Launches Explosive In-Person Attack Against Hunter Biden
:{:{LGBTQ activist Erin Reed, who first reported on the legislation, writes: “A person could not call, for instance, a fiercely anti-gay or anti-trans pastor transphobic. The pastor would be able to sue their accusers for $35,000 and their accusers could not use the pastor’s ‘religious expression or beliefs’ to prove that the pastor is transphobic or homophobic.}:
Similarly, if a shopkeeper kicks a transgender person out of a shop while citing ‘God’s word’ or their ‘scientific beliefs’ and the video goes viral, the shopkeeper could claim that they were acting under their ‘constitutionally protected religious expression or beliefs’ or their ‘scientific beliefs.’ It would bar anyone from calling that shopkeeper transphobic.”}:
Florida Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani decried the legislation, writing: “More attempts to chill free speech in the ‘free’ State of Florida.”
Dr Robert Bohan, an Irish artist and scientist who says his “work is about the human condition and understanding how the mind is connected with the body and our environment,” on social media where he has over 300,000 followers voiced concern.
“The US is proud of free speech. The KKK can spit racism, misogynists can attack women & groups can call for the annihilation of Gay ppl,” Dr. Bohan wrote. “Florida is now removing free speech, but just for the Gays. If you can’t name your oppressor how do you call them out?”
Florida State University professor of history Paul Renfro observed, “For these folks, accusations of racism, sexism, transphobia, or homophobia are far more objectionable than the racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic policies they enact and support.”
The legislation is being sponsored by Republican state Senator Jason Brodeur, who last year “introduced a bill that would require the registration of bloggers who are critical of the state’s government,” leading a columnist at the right-wing National Review to call him a “moron” and an “idiot.” It’s unclear if that would be considered defamation under Sen. Brodeur’s new bill.
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148M $ DEFAMATION, THEN LIED AGAIN (EXHOR EVID ALWAYS ON THE WAY, THO HE BACKED OUT ON TESTIFYING; SO THEY SUED AGAIN
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Why Newsmax wants to drag a Greek Orthodox priest into Dominion defamation case - Alternet.org
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right-wing election deniers are seeing consequences of their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election by facing a slew of defamation lawsuits, The Guardian reports.}:
Per the report, "Defamation law has traditionally been sparingly used in the US, given the very high bar that plaintiffs have to meet. Under the 1964 supreme court ruling New York Times Co v Sullivan, they have to be able to show 'actual malice' on behalf of the accused.
Rachel Goodman, an attorney with non-partisan advocacy organization Protect Democracy, told The Guardian, said the group's legal action is about "accountability as a way of ensuring that our democracy can get back on track."
Currently, according to the report, Protect Democracy has five ongoing defamation suits "against individuals and outlets who propagated election denial, including ex-President Donald Trump lawyer and former New York mayor Giuliani, the Gateway Pundit and the beleaguered undercover video outfit Project Veritas," as well as conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza, and failed Arizona GOP candidate Kari Lake.
The Guardian notes election denier and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell also faces defamation suits from voting machine technology firms Dominion and Smartmatic.
Per the report, "The lawsuits are designed in part as a strategy of deterrence," as "those pressing the libel suits hope that anyone contemplating a renewed assault on next year's presidential election, in which Trump is once again likely to be the Republican candidate, will look at the potentially devastating costs and think twice."
Giuliani's trial — Protect Democracy's first in its series of defamation suits — is set to take place in federal court in Washington, DC on December 11.
"This is lawfare," Lindell told the Guardian. "Lawfare hasn't been used in our country since the late 1700s, and that's what they are doing."
READ MORE:Lawyers are ditching top Trump allies for not paying their bills: report
The right-wing conspiracy theorist argued, "I have a first amendment right. These defamation cases are damaging free speech – people are afraid to speak out, to come forward with anything."
Goodman emphasized in her interview that "the first amendment does not provide blanket protection for mendacity," saying, "It does not protect those who knowingly spread lies that destroy reputations and lives."
The lawyer added, "We aim to demonstrate that there is no immunity for spreading intentional and reckless lies. Ensuring accountability for intentional defamation is a crucial part of deterring election subversion from happening again in 2024."
:{*:{The Guardian's full report is here (subscription required).}:
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man who participated in the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol and subsequently became the face of a Fox News conspiracy theory is suing the network for defamation, correspondents Alan Feuer and Jeremy W. Peters reported in The New York Times on Wednesday.
Ray Epps is "seeking an unspecified amount in damages" for the character assassination that he allegedly endured from fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson's "'fantastical story' that Mr. Epps was an undercover government agent who instigated the violence at the Capitol as a way to disparage then-President Trump and his supporters," Feuer and Peters wrote.
"Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th," Epps' complaint states, according to Delaware Superior Court documents reviewed by the Times. Fox "settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol."
"After the unfounded accusations about Mr. Epps were aired on Mr. Carlson's show," Feuer and Peters explained, "they quickly spread to online communities of Trump supporters and to the political world as Republican members of Congress tried to link Mr. Epps to a fictitious conspiracy theory that he was involved in planning the Jan. 6 attack. They includedSenator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, both of whom made Mr. Epps — a two-time Trump voter — a focus of concern at public hearings."
Fox's false narrative "had damaging consequences for Mr. Epps and his wife, Robyn,who received numerous death threats and were forced to sell their five-acre ranch and wedding business in Arizona and move into a 350-square-foot mobile home parked at a remote trailer park in the mountains of Utah," per the**Times. "Online retailers began selling T-shirts that said 'Arrest Ray Epps.' Some people even recorded songs about him and posted them on YouTube, the complaint states, adding how he had been reduced 'into a character in a cartoonish conspiracy theory.'"
Epps' attorney, Michael Teter, noted that although his client "demanded in March that Fox and Mr. Carlson retract its stories about him and his purported role in the Capitol riot and issue an on-air apology, neither the network nor Mr. Carlson, whose prime-time show has since been canceled, responded."
Despite never being criminally charged for his role in the Capitol attack, the Times added, "Mr. Carlson and Fox settled on Mr. Epps as a 'villain' who could serve as a distraction from the network's own 'culpability for stoking the fire that led to the events of January 6th.' Mr. Carlson, it said, became 'fixated on Epps' and began the promoting the idea that Mr. Epps and the federal government were responsible for the Capitol riots.
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not deterrent effect? b/c wacko?
cuomo chris
https://www.alternet.org/never-asked-me-for-evidence/
no lnx vid
"They’re not gonna give you anything': Chris Cuomo shuts down Mike Lindell’s Fox News conspiracy
Brandon Gage April 28, 2023
MyPillow Chief Executive Officer and unrelenting 2020 election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell has accused Fox News of participating in a nefarious scheme to steal the contest from former President Donald Trump, even though no such scenario ever took place.
The conservative network's call that now-President Joe Biden had defeated Trump in Arizona – winning its eleven Electoral College votes – has remained a thorn in the side of Trump and other denialists who refuse to accept that he lost the state. Failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is arguably the most vocal example.
Similarly, Lindell has yet to abandon his debunked campaign to have Biden's victory overturned, despite facing a massive defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which settled a parallel case with Fox News for $787.5 million earlier this month.
READ MORE: 'Dumbest metaphor I've ever heard': Tucker Carlson compared vaccines to MyPillow and it totally bombed
"I will never back down, ever, ever, ever," Lindell told The New York Times on April 6th. "They can't deny it. Nobody can deny it," he added of Dominion, whom he alleges aided in the plot to take the election away from Trump.
This is the narrative that Lindell pushed on Thursday night's edition of Cuomo. Without providing substantive evidence, Lindell argued that Fox News perverted the election. News Nation host Chris Cuomo, however, refused to indulge Lindell's rotten red herring.
"I believe it is not about the law. I believe it's about politics and persuasion, that's why I wanted to see – Fox is not gonna be selling what you want it to sell when it comes to our elections. That's what this settlement means. That's why I'm asking whether or not you'll still support him," Cuomo wondered, referring to Trump's 2024 White House bid.
Lindell lost it.
READ MORE: 'They did nothing wrong': Mike Lindell loses it over Fox News’ 'strange' Dominion settlement
"Fox's candidate is Ron DeSantis," he declared of the Republican Florida governor. "Fox's settlement – Fox did this settlement, Chris I've said it from the get-go– I believe Fox played a big part in this election crime, because back then, they called Arizona early.They've did– they've made a – Smartmatic sued Fox News on February 4th of 2021. That started lawfare in this whole country. Since that time, people like me have not been able to go on any conservative media and talk about our election. They didn't even talk about 2000 Mules, which had nothing to do with electronic machines. So Fox has been suppressing, for some reason, and they make this deal with Dominion? This backdoor deal? Gimme a break."
Cuomo set the record straight.
"Yeah, they made the deal with Dominion. They made the deal with Dominion because they were caught and they knew it was only gonna get only worse. Sixty-one outta sixty-two vettings of these issues have gone against – but sixty-one outta sixty-two have been lost, and the one that wasn't was held in abeyance," he noted.
Lindell doubled down.
"Chris, Chris, Chris. I've subpoenaed Fox.I have subpoenaed Fox for ev – they've never asked me for the evidence. We posted on FrankSpeech. Anyone can go and look at it. They've – Fox News has never subpoenaed me for the evidence," he bellowed.
"Of course they didn't want the evidence," Cuomo quipped.
"We have subpoenaed Fox for their evidence but they won't give us anything. They won't give us anything. We're going to the judges..." Lindell continued until Cuomo cut him off.
"Well, they're not gonna give you anything. But Mike, Mike, they do not produce evidence of the nonexistence of the election being rigged," Cuomo said. "And they did more than anybody else did to fuel the speculation, which is how they got jammed up with Dominion."
Watch below via Mediaite or at this link.
READ MORE: Mike Lindell ordered to pay $5 million reward to expert who debunked 'rigged election' claims
The New York Times' full interview with Lindell is available here (subscription required).
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https://www.alternet.org/fox-news-puts-blame-on-trump-in-new-defamation-trial-defense-strategy-2659874925/
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yahoomail 4 23
Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, is making a third attempt at his defamation lawsuit against The Intercept.
We’ve spent over $200,000 on legal fees fighting off this action, on top of the countless hours spent on these cases by our internal legal team.
Make no mistake: We stand by our reporting on Prince 100 percent. As the founder of one of the most powerful private mercenary armies in the world, Erik Prince is absolutely worthy of journalistic inquiry.
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an 3 23
https://www.alternet.org/ron-desantis-2659533898/
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1316
no lnx
How DeSantis declared war on the last century’s 'most important 1st Amendment decision': legal analyst
Alex Henderson March 08, 2023
Gov. Ron DeSantis and his MAGA Republican allies in the Florida State Legislature have made no secret of their disdain for the mainstream media. During a roundtable discussion that he hosted in February, DeSantis argued that it should be easier to sue journalists for defamation. And a Republican ally, Florida State Rep. Alex Andrade, later proposed a bill that would do exactly that: Florida House Bill 951.
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Andrade's bill would be a blatant violation of New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision that set a tough standard for proving defamation. Under Sullivan, defamation must involve "actual malice," which is very difficult to prove. Dominion Voting Systems is trying to show "actual malice" in its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against right-wing Fox News, and ironically, the voting technology company would have an easier time proving its case if the High Court overturned Sullivan and agreed with Andrade's bill. Andrade and DeSantis believe that Sullivan was wrongly decided.
Meanwhile, Florida State Sen. Jason Brodeur (another Republican DeSantis ally) has proposed a bill that would require bloggers who write about state officials to register with the state government and file regular reports on their activities. Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) has slammed the Brodeur-sponsored Florida Senate Bill 1316 as unconstitutional, tweeting, "The idea that bloggers criticizing a politician should register with the government is insane. It is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately."
READ MORE: Civil libertarians slam Ron DeSantis’ 'brazen and blatantly unconstitutional' war on press freedom
In a scathing op-ed published by The Guardian on March 7, journalist Trevor Timm — executive director and co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation — warns that DeSantis and his allies have declared an all-out war on the U.S. Constitution's 1st Amendment. And Timm is as critical of Andrade's bill as he is of Brodeur's.
"Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, and his cronies, not content with destroying free speech in public schools, have set for themselves a new target: destroying press freedom and every Floridian's right to criticize public officials," Timm argues. "Along the way, they aim to overturn the most important 1st Amendment U.S. Supreme Court decision of the 20th Century."
The decision that Timm is referring to is, of course, New York Times v. Sullivan. Timm notes that DeSantis and his allies are hoping to "weaken the 'actual malice' standard from Sullivan, to make it easier for public officials to sue newspapers or critics."
"Now, can states just pass laws that blatantly ignore Supreme Court precedent? Of course not," Timm explains. "Any responsible judge would strike this down as unconstitutional right away. But DeSantis may be hoping for a friendly appeals court ruling from a Trump-appointed judge or Supreme Court showdown to revisit the Sullivan ruling — following the same decades-long Republican strategy that finally overturned Roe v. Wade. And in the meantime, DeSantis can burnish his anti-media bona fides for his presidential run, and Republican legislatures around the country can use the opportunity to copy the bill or one-up him."
READ MORE: FL GOP bill would 'allow government officials to harass and bankrupt' opposers with defamation lawsuits
Timm points out that "many legal scholars consider" Sullivan the greatest 1st Amendment victory of "the last century" — a victory that DeSantis and his allies would like to roll back.
"It is one of the primary reasons newspapers in the U.S. can aggressively report on public officials and powerful wealthy individuals without the constant fear that they are going to be sued out of existence," Timm observes. "And up until a few years ago, when Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch started criticizing it, everyone assumed it was settled law."
Timm compares Brodeur's blogger bill to a draconian law that was passed under President Vladimir Putin in Russia in 2014.
"The proposed law, authored by state legislator Jason Brodeur, would — I kid you not — compel 'bloggers' who criticize the governor, other officers of the executive branch, or members of the legislature to register with the State of Florida," Timm observes. "Under the bill, anyone paid to write on the internet would have to file monthly reports every time they utter a government official's name in a critical manner. If not, they'd face potentially thousands of dollars in fines. It's a policy so chilling that it would make Vladimir Putin proud, and I wish that was hyperbole."
Timm continues, "In 2014, Russia's autocratic leader signed a very similar provision, then known as the 'blogger’s law.' As The Verge explained at the time, 'under it, any blogger with more than 3000 readers is required to register with the Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media oversight agency."
The agency that Brodeur has proposed would be similar to the pro-Putin Roskomnadzor, Timm argues.
"DeSantis has turned Florida into a national laboratory for speech suppression," the journalist warns. "And every American, Republican or Democrat, should be horrified."
READ MORE: How an overtly 'authoritarian' Florida GOP bill is designed to silence anti-DeSantis bloggers: journalist
Read Trevor Timm’s full op-ed for The Guardian at this link.
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