Last year the New York Times published a piece that flat-out accused President Trump of colluding with the Russians to steal the 2016 election in exchange for Russia-friendly polices. It wasn’t true and they knew it wasn’t true but published it anyway. That’s a little thing we call “libel” here in America and so Trump is suing the purveyor of fake news for millions. Considering how much false information the NYT has spewed about Trump over the past 4 years, I think he’s being kind for only suing them once.
Fox News reports:
The Trump campaign has filed a libel lawsuit against what it called the “extremely biased” New York Times, saying the paper’s March 27, 2019 op-ed titled “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo” amounted to a knowingly false smear intended to “improperly influence the presidential election in November 2020.”
The lawsuit seeks “compensatory damages in the millions of damages,” as well as punitive damages and legal fees. Knowing that then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller was about to exonerate President Trump, the campaign argues in the lawsuit, the Times sought to quickly “damage” the president’s campaign “before the Mueller Report would be released debunking the conspiracy claims.”
“Today the President’s re-election campaign filed suit against the New York Times for falsely stating the campaign had an ‘overarching deal’ with ‘Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy’ to ‘help the campaign against Hillary Clinton’ in exchange for ‘a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from … economic sanctions,'” said Trump campaign legal advisor Jenna Ellis.
“The statements were and are 100 percent false and defamatory. The complaint alleges The Times was aware of the falsity at the time it published them, but did so for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign, while misleading its own readers in the process,” Ellis added.
The NYT defended themselves with some false equivalency:
“The Trump Campaign has turned to the courts to try to punish an opinion writer for having an opinion they find unacceptable. Fortunately, the law protects the right of Americans to express their judgments and conclusions, especially about events of public importance. We look forward to vindicating that right in this case,” said the Times in a statement.
Yes, opinions are protected, but what they published wasn’t presented as an opinion but rather a fact. Here’s some of the offending piece:
The March 2019 op-ed, published shortly before Mueller’s findings became clearer in April 2019, asserted that “there was no need for detailed electoral collusion between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy because they had an overarching deal: the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions. The Trumpites knew about the quid and held out the prospect of the quo.”
Nowhere in that piece does the author say “it is my opinion” or “I think this is what’s going on.” No, the author states as fact that Trump had a deal with Putin to steal the election in exchange for sanction relief and other benefits. This is not true and the NYT times knew it was bullshit before publishing it.
If I say “I think the New York Times editorial staff are a bunch of child molesters” that’s an opinion and protected speech. If I say, “The editors at the NYT are all convicted pedophiles” that’s libel because I left out that it was my personal feeling and presented like a truth. It doesn’t even matter if some of the NYT editors are convicted child molesters, it’s libel to present something I know is probably false as fact.
This lawsuit is part of a wonderful new trend to actually hold liberals accountable for the hatred and lies they spew. Tusli Gabbard is suing Hillary Clinton for calling her a Russian asset. George Zimmerman is suing Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren for saying he is a white supremacist murderer. CNN just settled a massive lawsuit for portraying Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann as a racist instigator.
There already wasn’t any money in fake news but if more of these lawsuits are successful the liberal media might actually have to try reporting the actual news.
