Trump is searching for $475 million in punitive damages. Like different Trump lawsuits, this one lacks substance — extra bluntly, it’s rubbish — with its solely utility being as a information to this nation’s wide-ranging First Amendment protections. CNN, in earlier correspondence with Trump excerpted within the authorized submitting, informed the previous president’s counsel, “While we will address the merits of any lawsuit should one be filed, we note that you have not identified a single false or defamatory statement in your letter.”
Although Trump’s monetary calls for run to 9 figures, the doc behind them is a flimsy 29 pages. It takes challenge with statements aired on CNN that accuse Trump of pushing the “big lie” and that characterize him with the “false … and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler.’ ” The most facially laughable of those, after all, is “Russian lackey,” which isn’t solely an innocuous put-down but in addition rests, partially, on one of the vital notorious moments in U.S. diplomatic historical past — when then-President Trump sided with Russia over U.S. intelligence relating to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
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FollowThe different allegedly “defamatory labels” are not any such factor. Here are a couple of claims within the grievance, adopted by explanations as to why they aren’t defamatory:
· Psychiatrist Allen Frances informed then-CNN host Brian Stelter in August 2019, “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin and Mao were in the last century.” Frances additionally stated: “He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were. He needs to be contained but he needs to be contained by attacking his policies, not his person. It’s crazy for us to be destroying the climate our children will live in. It’s crazy to be giving tax cuts to the rich that will add trillions of dollars to the debt our children will have to pay. It’s crazy to be destroying our democracy by claiming that the press and the courts are the enemy of the people.” Trump argues in his grievance that PolitiFact cited part of Frances’s statement as a “Pants on Fire” falsehood.
This was a darkish second for CNN. Stelter later admitted that he should have challenged Frances (he cited technical issues, saying he hadn’t heard the assertion). But the unspecific nature of the commentary and the way in which it’s couched — that Trump “may be” chargeable for the deaths — place it within the realm of rhetorical hyperbole. Shameless commentary isn’t at all times libelous. “I’m reasonably confident that a court would rule that, taken in context, that passage is an expression of opinion by Dr. Frances about the human toll of policies Trump pursued, which is protected by the First Amendment,” Lee Levine, a longtime media protection legal professional, tells me by e mail.
· House Democrats in March 2019 likened facets of Trump’s rise to Hitler’s, as CNN reported then. According to the suit, “the ‘reporting’ is nothing more than self-serving pronouncements by political opponents of [Trump] and their news proxy (and political participant), CNN.”
Read the statements in query, and it’s clear why they’re not remotely defamatory. For occasion, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) stated, “Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. And he went about the business of discrediting institutions to the point that people bought into it.” Clyburn additionally stated: “Nobody would have believed it now. But swastikas hung in churches throughout Germany. We had better be very careful.”
To defame somebody, you need to make a false assertion that purports to be a truth about that individual. In this occasion, Clyburn is talking to historic parallels and political traits, not launching the form of advert hominem assaults essential to win a defamation declare.
· CNN host Jake Tapper stated on a present in January 2022: “There is a reason Trump was in Arizona, to push the legislature to disenfranchise the state’s voters based on all of his deranged election lies.”
Those italics are within the lawsuit, apparently searching for to spotlight the defamatory sting of Tapper’s remarks. Except they’re no such factor. It’s effectively established that Trump has been informed, repeatedly, that his claims a few stolen election are false. His persistence in airing these claims means that he’s mendacity, although Trump’s legal professionals have said that he “subjectively believes that the results of the 2020 presidential election turned on fraudulent voting activity in several key states.”
Even if Trump believed his personal statements, nevertheless, Tapper’s commentary can be protected as hyperbole — a valued commodity in a democratic society.
CNN’s legal professionals can even seemingly argue that the challenged statements within the suit are, to a big extent, protected as assertions of opinion — the very doctrine that Trump deployed to get out of a lawsuit introduced by a Republican strategist in 2016.
The grievance additionally argues that CNN has handled Trump’s claims of a stolen election in a different way from varied claims by Democrats in current election cycles. Set apart for a second the truth that Trump’s claims have been extra persistent, extra egregious and extra impactful, as all of us noticed on the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Even if CNN had handled Democratic claims of voter fraud extra favorably, that will be protected First Amendment exercise. Just suppose what would occur to Fox News if slanted reporting amounted to libel.
· Licht held a convention name in June 2022 through which he expressed low regard for the wording “big lie,” a term with Nazi origins. “Since then,” reads the grievance, “CNN’s on-air personalities — including John King, Jake Tapper, John Avlon, Brianna Keilar, and Don Lemon, among others — have continued to use the phrase in describing [Trump and Trump’s] questions of election integrity despite an apparent admonition from their Chief Executive Officer.”
So what? This is a administration challenge for CNN, not a authorized one.
Calling presidents liars, even after they’re trustworthy, is a good American custom. Trump, the best liar in American political historical past, stands no likelihood of upending it.