Devin Nunes, CEO Of Trump's TRUTH Social, Confirms That 'Free Speech' Social Media Will Be HEAVILY Moderated

from the thank-you-section-230 dept

It's never been a secret that for all of the public claims about how Donald Trump's upcoming social network "TRUTH Social" will be for "free speech" that this was never actually the plan. We noted right up front that its terms of service appeared to be way more restrictive than all the competitors it was criticizing -- and even said it would be a violation of terms to "annoy" anyone working for the site. When Rep. Devin Nunes -- who has a long history of suing people for criticizing and mocking him (i.e., no friend of free speech) -- announced he was retiring from Congress to become CEO of Trump's social network, we noted that he'd be quick to ban people on the site.

And, so it's no surprise that Fox Business is reporting that the site will have "strict" content moderation tools in place, in order to make the site "family friendly."

Fox Business has learned that TMTG is partnering with Hive—a San Francisco-based Series D start-up that provides automated solutions through cloud-based artificial intelligence for understanding images, videos, and text content. Hive’s technology provides automated content moderation across video, image, text and audio.

"We want to be very family-friendly, we want this to be a very safe place, and we are focused on making sure any illegal content is not on the site," Nunes said in an exclusive interview with Fox Business.

"Hive has a great track record in this, and they have been good to work with," Nunes continued. "They are very helpful for our team and because of their experience, I think they’re helping to craft the right spot for us."

He added: "We want to be the most family-friendly site."

Hive is, indeed, pretty widely used by various social media platforms struggling to keep craziness in check -- including Parler and Chatroulette.

But, it's pretty incredible to see Nunes saying this without any self-awareness at all. Considering how much he has criticized Twitter, YouTube and other platforms for their moderation practices -- which were also very much based on the belief of making their platforms "family friendly" for users -- it's pretty ridiculous to pretend that TRUTH Social is somehow different.

Also, the reason that TRUTH Social can work with Hive and make these decisions about how to moderate their platform in a "family friendly" manner is because of Section 230 giving them the freedom to do so without liability -- the very law that Trump himself wanted repealed.

Of course, the real irony is that along with that article on Fox Business is a video clip of Maria Bartiromo, whining to GETTR CEO Jason Miller, about how terrible existing social media companies are because they "censor" content, and talking about how great it is that TRUTH Social will be different. She quotes Trump talking about this "new age of censorship." There seems to be no recognition at all that TRUTH Social will moderate just like every other site does -- and, in fact, this video is over an article saying exactly that. Even more ridiculous: the example that Baritromo uses of "censorship" from the big existing platforms... was not censorship at all. She posted a photo of a sunrise to Instagram, and listed upcoming guests as well as "topics" that they would be talking about, including "vaccines."

It appears this triggered an automated context system on Instagram that when someone tried to share the image, Instagram popped up a note that said "Make sure the information is reliable before sharing" and added a link to a CDC website with information about vaccines. That is not even remotely "censorship." Indeed, it's exactly the opposite. It is the quintessential "more information" -- the very thing that Baritromo, quoting Trump, seemed to suggest we need more of. But because it's about her photo, she claims its "censorship."

Perhaps just as laughable, in that interview, Miller claims "fact is, we're living in the worst period of political censorship in American history." That's absolute hogwash. The opposite is objectively true. Until recently the vast majority of Americans had nowhere to speak publicly about politics. Now they all have places they can speak. It's just that not everyone gets to speak on everyone else's property.

The whole thing is crazy, and it would be nice if Baritromo, Trump, Miller, and Nunes just out and out admitted the reality: they just don't like it when their own nonsense is moderated, and they want separate rules for themselves than for anyone else.

Filed Under: ai, content moderation, devin nunes, donald trump, family friendly, free speech, maria bartiromo, section 230
Companies: fox news, gettr, hive, instagram, tmtg, truth social, twitter

As The White House (And Others) Blame Facebook For COVID Vaccination Rates, Health Officials Are Blaming Fox News

from the the-real-problem dept

Over the last few weeks there's been a weird, wasteful, and just silly dispute in which the White House has tried to blame Facebook (and misinformation on Facebook) for not enough people agreeing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 (in light of cases ramping up again). Things have gotten so stupid that two Senators have released a terribly unconstitutional bill attempting to hold Facebook liable for "health misinformation" on its platform.

But... is Facebook actually to blame? Mark Zuckerberg (who, um, is obviously not an unbiased party) made a completely valid point in response to all of this: Facebook is available around the globe, yet much of the rest of the world is not seeing the same levels of vaccine hesitancy (indeed, the problem elsewhere tends to be a lack of supply), and that might raise questions as to why Facebook is facing the blame for vaccine hesitancy.

"..if one country is not reaching its vaccine goal, but other countries that all these same social media tools are in are doing just fine.. should lead you to conclude that.. platforms are not the decisive element.."

Of course, there's more to it than that, but what strikes me as most notable is that actual health experts in places where there are high levels of vaccine hesitancy don't seem to think that Facebook is the problem. They seem to recognize that it's actually a Fox News problem. In an article talking with health officials in states like Alabama and Louisiana, where vaccine hesitancy is the highest, they're saying the real problem remains Fox News.

Doctors and health officials in Alabama and Louisiana say their only hope for getting people vaccinated is if the media outlets that message to these areas, primarily Fox News, start advocating people get the shot, instead of pushing them away from the jab.

“I have people come up to me and say, ‘Why on CNN? Couldn’t you go on Fox?’ They are still very angry over the last couple of years. There’s an irritation. They are super frustrated. They need to hear it from the people that they trust. They need to hear it from where they get their news every day. And I don’t know why not Fox. Why not?,” O’Neal said. “But it has to change this week. Every single show. And it has to be about the community, not the ‘you’ because there’s been too much about the ‘you.’ ‘You’ they got indoctrinated. It is not about ‘you,’ it is about the community. You’re going to kill your community.”

Others have been making this point as well.

But despite the enormous reach of Facebook, only one media outlet has devoted itself to injecting falsehoods about the pandemic into the nervous systems of its audience on a 24/7 basis. That, of course, would be Fox News, the right-wing cable station that tells its viewers, over and over, that vaccines are dangerous and that wearing a mask to prevent COVID-19 is ineffective — and, in any case, is not worth the price we’d pay in giving up our freedom.

None of this should be surprising. For years now we've been pointing people to the detailed, data-driven research findings of Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts in their book, Network Propaganda, which traced the actual flow of mis- and disinformation regarding the 2016 Presidential election, and found that the main vector (by far) was not Facebook, but Fox News. Yes, things would spread on Facebook eventually, but only after Fox News would make it into a story. A later study they did regarding disinformation about mail-in ballots found the same thing.

That's not to say that mis- and disinformation don't travel on Facebook. Clearly it happens all the time. But focusing on social media, as if it's the primary culprit, or that somehow getting Facebook to delete the propagandists on that platform will magically solve all disinformation is clearly folly. Of course, you won't see Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ray Lujan introducing bills to make Fox News liable for the health misinformation they spew -- they at least recognize that that would not only be blatantly unconstitutional, but would be interpreted as an attack on conservatives' favorite TV news channel.

Mis- and disinformation remain a real problem, but kneejerk attempts to blame social media are not helping and not getting at any of the root causes of the credibility crisis currently facing people throughout the US.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, blame, cable news, covid, fox news, health misinformation, health officials, social media, vaccines
Companies: fox news

Trump's FCC Nominee Asked Fox News To Help Destroy Section 230 To Help Elect More Republicans

from the free-speech? dept

We've written a few times about Nathan Simington, who is currently nominated to take over Michael O'Rielly's seat at the FCC. As you'll recall, O'Rielly's renomination was withdrawn after he dared to give a talk in which he noted, accurately, that the 1st Amendment means that the government cannot regulate how private companies handle content moderation. Simington, in contrast to O'Rielly, has been at the center of various efforts to force social media companies to host speech they do not wish to host (a clear violation of the 1st Amendment, which does not allow for the government to compel speech).

Simington was the guy who apparently wrote the original executive order that kicked off the ridiculous (and still unconstitutional) FCC review process of Section 230. He also works at NTIA, which is run by Adam Candeub, a guy who has spent the last few years attacking (or misrepresenting) Section 230, after he filed a failed lawsuit against Twitter on behalf of a white supremacist. When the lawsuit was filed, Candeub appeared not to understand 230 when I engaged with him in an email exchange. Since then he's spent the intervening years, trying to change 230 to match his false belief of what it should be.

So, perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that it's now been revealed that Simington and Candeub appeared to spend some time over the summer trying to get Fox News' bloviating talking heads to start attacking Section 230 as well, hoping that this would spur the FCC on towards action (again, which legally it cannot do) against the law.

Simington, a senior adviser in a key Commerce Department tech agency, wrote that the popular Fox News host could help sway the FCC to act on Trump's proposal before Election Day. He also suggested that democracy hinged on the ability of the commission — which has not traditionally regulated social media — to target Silicon Valley companies.

The actual letter to a Fox News staffer, in which Simington notes that this is part of a scheme with Candeub (who is cc'd) is really stunning. Having a government official asking a media personality to assist the government in pushing through an unconstitutional attack on the 1st Amendment is staggering -- and should immediately raise questions as to why either Simington or Candeub are part of the government. Simington flat out admits that he's trying to force the FCC to take action to help support the President and others "down ballot" in the election.

That is not supposed to be how government officials act. Campaigning/electioneering efforts are not supposed to be done by current government staff who are paid by our taxpayer dollars. This is a hugely problematic stance, and should call into question both Simington and Candeub's role in government. It certainly should preclude Simington from being considered for a position on the FCC itself.

As discussed, my boss, Dept. Ass't Sec'y Adam Candeub (CC'd), is strategizing about how best to present the NTIA's petition to the FCC re CDA 230. We hope that FCC rulemaking will uphold press and communication freedoms while restraining social media companies from behavior that, absent certain case law re CDA 230, would be illegal.

As you know, this is a hot issue right now, not merely per the President's major social media executive order, but also (1) Senator Cruz's recent actions re Twitter, coming out of his long-standing concerns about the partiality and bias emerging from social media's de facto content creation via moderation, promotion and demotion, and (2) Senator Hawley's new social media bill.

We therefore hope that there might be some way of engaging with Ms. Ingraham on our piece of this issue. Any additional support we might be able to obtain could help to get the FCC on board more quickly and thereby ensure a freer, fairer social media landscape going into the elections this fall. This is of concern both to the presidency and also down-ballot, and given the emerging role of social media as a replacement for mass media, our democracy will be weakened if we cannot respond to this issue quickly and effectively.

If you have some time tomorrow, I'd love to talk further about this, whether re engaging with Ms. Ingraham or generally for our own planning.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (a long term vocal critic of Section 230) seems to recognize how problematic this is:

“This email shows that Mr. Simington was an active and eager soldier in President Trump’s attempted assault on the First Amendment," Blumenthal said in a statement to POLITICO. "Mr. Simington was willing to bully the very agency he’s been nominated to join in order to do the electoral bidding of the Republican party on the taxpayer dime.

"I am demanding that Mr. Simington explain himself in follow-up questions for the record, and I certainly hope he will be more forthcoming in his written responses than he was during his hearing,"

In any normal administration this would be a massive scandal, abusing the power of government to help a specific party/candidate. Remember all the (mostly exaggerated) fuss about the IRS paying extra attention to conservative non-profits? That was one of the biggest scandals of the Obama era, in part because it was government employees supposedly making decisions based on politics (even though the details showed it wasn't quite that bad). This is worse. Here they are flat out admitting that they are trying to work with Fox News to use the levers of government to unconstitutionally change the law in order to help their preferred political party win in an election.

Filed Under: adam candeub, election, fcc, free speech, laura ingraham, michael o'rielly, nathan simington, ntia, politics, section 230
Companies: fox news

New Study: Once Again, The Mainstream Media Is A Bigger Problem In Spreading Disinformation Than Social Media

from the deal-with-fox-news-first dept

We've discussed in the past Yochai Benkler's excellent book "Network Propaganda," (and had Benkler on our podcast) showing (with a ton of data) how the inclination many have to immediately blame social media for the spread of disinformation is, in its own way, misinformation itself. What the research found was that crazy conspiracy theories didn't really spread as fast until they showed up on Fox News. That was basically the catalyst for them to then spread wildly on social media.

Benkler and his team are back with a new study, specifically regarding how disinformation about mail-in ballots has spread. And, again, the details show that mass media was the key in making it spread, with social media "playing a secondary role."

Despite the consensus among independent academic and journalistic investigations that voter fraud is rare and extremely unlikely to determine a national election, tens of millions of Americans believe the opposite. This is a study of the disinformation campaign that led to widespread acceptance of this apparently false belief and to its partisan distribution pattern. Contrary to the focus of most contemporary work on disinformation, our findings suggest that this highly effective disinformation campaign, with potentially profound effects for both participation in and the legitimacy of the 2020 election, was an elite-driven, mass-media led process. Social media played only a secondary and supportive role.

Using the same methods in Network Propaganda, they found that this time it went beyond Fox News, but that the President was basically using his position at President, to harness the big mainstream media operations -- which still have simply failed to contend with how to cover a President who deliberately lies, who deliberately tries to bully the media into spreading utter nonsense. The report shows that he's been very, very successful in turning the media -- who he frequently accuses of publishing "fake news" -- into actual purveyors of fake news: namely the fake news Donald Trump himself wants them to spread.

Our findings here suggest that Donald Trump has perfected the art of harnessing mass media to disseminate and at times reinforce his disinformation campaign by using three core standard practices of professional journalism. These three are: elite institutional focus (if the President says it, it’s news); headline seeking (if it bleeds, it leads); and balance, neutrality, or the avoidance of the appearance of taking a side. He uses the first two in combination to summon coverage at will, and has used them continuously to set the agenda surrounding mail-in voting through a combination of tweets, press conferences, and television interviews on Fox News. He relies on the latter professional practice to keep audiences that are not politically pre-committed and have relatively low political knowledge confused, because it limits the degree to which professional journalists in mass media organizations are willing or able to directly call the voter fraud frame disinformation.

Of course, Fox News and the wider Republican Party and media ecosystem also remains a key issue:

The president is, however, not acting alone. Throughout the first six months of the disinformation campaign, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and staff from the Trump campaign appear repeatedly and consistently on message at the same moments, suggesting an institutionalized rather than individual disinformation campaign. The efforts of the president and the Republican Party are supported by the right-wing media ecosystem, primarily Fox News and talk radio functioning in effect as a party press. These reinforce the message, provide the president a platform, and marginalize or attack those Republican leaders or any conservative media personalities who insist that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud associated with mail-in voting.

Benkler wrote a detailed post for the Columbia Journalism Review that gives you a more reader friendly version of the paper's findings. In it, he notes that when it comes to mail-in ballot disinformation, it's not happening because of foreign interference or social media algorithms. The disinformation is coming from inside the White House.

What this means is that the “usual suspects” in public debates about disinformation are not the central actors in voting disinformation. We found no examples where clickbait factories, fake pages (Russian or otherwise), or Facebook’s algorithms could explain any peak in engagement that was not better explained as having been set in motion and heavily promoted by political figures and elite right-wing media personalities, and disseminated to millions by major media outlets. On Twitter, if bots or trolls played any role, it was dwarfed by tweets from the president, his staff, and other institutional and media allies.

While the information does eventually spread on social media, that happens after the mainstream media discusses it. As Benkler notes, all the worries and attacks about social media appear to be somewhat misguided:

There is a profound disconnect between the broad public concern with social media disinformation, the persistent scientific evidence that exposure to online fake news is concentrated in a tiny minority of users, and survey evidence that repeatedly shows that less than 20 percent of US respondents say they rely on social media as a major source of political news. Network and local TV, by contrast, are the primary source of political news for about 30 percent of the population, and news websites or apps accounted for another 25 percent, according to the most recent Pew survey. When arranged according to the degree to which they report believing mail-in voter fraud is a major problem, adults who get their news from ABC, CBS, and NBC occupy an intermediate position between Fox News viewers, on one end, and readers of the New York Times, viewers of MSNBC, or NPR listeners, on the other. Local TV news viewers, in turn, form the least politically knowledgeable group of Americans, edging out the much younger respondents who mostly rely on social media. When we analyzed the stories about mail-in voter fraud, we observed that peaks in media coverage usually consisted of large numbers of syndicated stories reported by the online sites of local papers and television stations.

There's a lot more in the full paper, but the underlying message is that perhaps we should stop blaming social media for disinformation. That does not appear to be the root of the problem at all.

Filed Under: disinformation, donald trump, journalism, mail in ballots, mainstream media, misinformation, social media
Companies: associated press, facebook, fox news

Why Is Fox News Acting As State Media, Announcing Trump's Lawsuits Before They're Filed And Failing To Point Out How Frivolous They Are?

from the that's-a-rhetorical-question dept

As we've been pointing out, the Trump campaign, with the help of lawyer Charles Harder, has been suing a list of media enemies over the past week. There was the NY Times, followed by the Washington Post and (probably not) finally, CNN. We've detailed why each lawsuit is frivolous, and how they appear to be playing to Trump's base in a performative manner, attacking the credibility of the media which has done critical reporting on his Presidency, and doing so in a manner that potentially serves two purposes: gets his fans riled up about the media while simultaneously creating a chilling effect on fairly typical journalistic analysis of the Trump administration and campaign.

But I wanted to focus in on a separate point: the effective "state media" of Fox News reporting on these lawsuits in absolutely ridiculous ways. Reporter Gregg Re wrote about the NY Times case, and at least included a link to the filing and noted that "lawsuits for libel against media organizations by public figures must clear a high bar." But the reporting on the next two lawsuits, done by reporters Brian Flood and Brooke Singman, were terrible. Both of them claimed that reporting on the filing of a federal lawsuit was a Fox News "exclusive." That's not what exclusive means, guys.

Also, while Fox News eventually added a link to the filing in the story about the CNN lawsuit and the NY Times one, it initially did not link to the CNN one, and as of this writing has still not linked to the Washington Post filing. Indeed, as you can see above, the reporters almost gloat over the fact that Fox News "obtained" access to the lawsuit -- and then failed to provide it to their readers. And with the CNN lawsuit, a search of PACER a couple of hours after the Fox News article went live showed no evidence that the case had actually been filed yet. In other words, it's likely that someone associated with the campaign or the lawsuit handed the complaint over to Fox News to "break" the "exclusive" story.

And perhaps that explains why the reporting by Flood and Singman is so, so bad. Unlike the story by Re regarding the NY Times lawsuit, this one makes no effort to explain why this lawsuit faces a huge barrier (known as the 1st Amendment). Even worse, it repeats a blatantly false statement from the campaign's "legal adviser" Jenna Ellis:

“False statements are not protected under the U.S. Constitution; therefore, these suits will have no chilling effect on freedom of the press. If journalists are more accurate in their statements and reporting, that would be a positive development, but not why these suits were filed," Ellis added.

There is some irony in this statement about false statements being false, but it is. There's plenty of precedent here, including (most clearly) the United States v. Alvarez (a case we've been pointing to a lot lately), which says:

The Court has never endorsed the categorical rule the Government advances: that false statements receive no First Amendment protection.

A good reporter would perhaps point that out in response to Ellis. But it appears that Fox News is less interested in employing good reporters, and more interested in acting as state media, and boosting the President it supports.

This is especially sickening, given that these are attacks on the very 1st Amendment that protects Fox News -- and its long history of misleading, inaccurate, and occasionally false statements, that the network is somewhat infamous for. You would think, if it wasn't subsumed in cultish adherence to the President, that it would recognize the importance of actually continuing to defend the part of the Constitution that allows them to exist. At the very least, you might hope that its reporters would be careful enough to accurately report the law. Apparently that is too much to ask.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, brian flood, brooke singman, charles harder, defamation, donald trump, free speech, gregg re, slapp, state media
Companies: fox news, news corp.

NPR Pulls Out The Big Guns: Asks For Sanctions Against Lawyer Steven Biss For Lying

from the boom dept

Earlier this month, we wrote about an absolutely awful ruling in a bizarre lawsuit brought by Fox news commentator Ed Butowsky, represented by lawyer Steven Biss (a name you might recognize). Butowsky sued NPR and reporter David Folkenflik for accurately reporting on a failed lawsuit by another Fox News commentator, Rod Wheeler, accusing Fox News and Butowsky of defaming him in regards to a story about Seth Rich -- about whom conspiracy theorists seem to regularly fantasize.

As we noted, the NPR article highlighted over a dozen times that it was reporting on claims from Wheeler's lawsuit, and yet the judge, Amos Mazzant, ignored all of this to say that it did not have clear sourcing, and thus allowed the case to move forward. We're still somewhat dumbfounded by this, but NPR and its lawyers have decided that now is the time to break out the big guns, and, in a new filing, are claiming that Butowsky and Biss directly lied to the the court, and should be sanctioned for it.

Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11, Defendants (collectively, “NPR”) respectfully move this Court for sanctions against Plaintiff Ed Butowsky (“Butowsky”) and his counsel. Butowsky knowingly pleaded false factual allegations in his Original Complaint (Dkt. 1), and the Court relied on them in denying NPR’s Motion to Dismiss (Order, Dkt. 65). Butowsky repeated those false allegations in Butowsky’s Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”) (Dkt. 72). His counsel either knew these allegations were false or failed to make reasonable inquiry under the circumstances. Having recently secured third-party discovery proving Butowsky made these misrepresentations, NPR brings this motion now to comply with its obligation to inform the Court of Rule 11 violations promptly

The specific claims are that Butowsky, with Biss as his lawyer, made "three key allegations" in his original and amended complaints:

(1) Butowsky was not involved in Wheeler’s investigation and had little communication with Wheeler;

(2) Butowsky had never seen, and was not a party to, Wheeler’s contract with the Rich family; and

(3) Chapwood Capital Investment Management, LLC (“Chapwood”), Butowsky’s business, lost Sally Davis as a customer because of the alleged defamation.

However, NPR says in its filing that during discovery, they have found out that all three of these key claims, which the court relied on in denying the motion to dismiss, were false.

First, Butowsky alleges that his involvement in Wheeler’s investigation was limited. Second, and relatedly, Butowsky alleges that he had never seen Wheeler’s contract with the Rich family. Both representations, purportedly based on Butowsky’s own personal knowledge, have been indisputably disproven by documents produced by [REDACTED]. Third, Butowsky alleges that his company lost clients and tens of millions of dollars in damages due to NPR’s defamation and disparagement, and cites as proof a single email from Sally Davis. But Davis swore in the attached declaration that Chapwood continues to manage her portfolio.

The filing documents "extensive" communications between Butowsky and Wheeler regarding the Rich investigation -- including Butowsky paying Wheeler prior to the Rich family agreeing to hire him to investigate the death of their son, Butowsky referring to the subsequent investigation as "our investigation" and receiving updated reports from Wheeler about the investigation, asking for and receiving access to Wheeler's investigation notes, and even reviewing "multiple drafts" of the eventual Fox News story before they were published.

The filing then goes into great depth detailing questionable actions by Butowsky, including making a clear threat that he was going to "sue the hell" out of "a lot of firms."

After Wheeler and Rich’s parents’ cases were (initially) dismissed, Butowsky publicly vowed revenge, saying:

Anybody who did anything negative to me as a result of the [Wheeler] lawsuit will pay ... I’m going to sue the hell out of a lot of firms. I want to see these people choke on their nerves and go through the same crap I had to go through.

Butowsky made good on his threat, filing a series of lawsuits in this District and going to great lengths—including misrepresentations in his pleadings—to keep his claims alive.

And then it goes into the details of why NPR's lawyers believe that Butowsky's lawyers, Biss and Ty Clevinger, deserve to be sanctioned -- including highlighting a long list of past misdeeds for which both lawyers have been sanctioned.

Both of Butowsky’s counsel have had their law licenses suspended and have been publicly reprimanded on multiple occasions. In fact, on January 14, 2020, Ty Clevenger’s California Bar license was suspended (his D.C. license had previously been suspended) for, among other things, filing frivolous litigation causing significant harm to the administration of justice. See In the Matter of Ty Odell Clevenger, Case Nos. 16-J-17320 (17-J-00289)-CV (St. Bar Court of Cal.) (Ex. I); see also Hughes v. Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc., No. 17-cv-7093, Mem. Order at 2 (S.D.N.Y. June 25, 2018) (listing multiple sanctions against Clevenger for “lack of respect for the judicial process” and “lack of candor”) (Ex. J); Robertson v. Cartinhour, 883 F.Supp.2d 121, 123, 128 (D.D.C. 2012), aff’d, 554 F. App’x 3 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (sanctioning Clevenger for “vexatious and abusive litigation tactics” and noting previous sanctions) (Ex. K). Clevenger was previously sanctioned for multiplying proceedings and unnecessarily increasing litigation burdens. See Ex. L, Sec. Am. Disciplinary Pet., Tex. Comm’n for Lawyer Discipline v. Clevenger, Cause No. 380-01407-2013, Collin County; Ex. M, Agreed Judgment of Public Reprimand, Commissions for Lawyer Discipline v. Ty Odell Clevenger, Cause No. 380-01407-2013; Ex. N, Notice of Disciplinary Charges, In the matter of Ty Odell Clevenger, Nos. 16-J-17320, 17-J-00289, State Bar Ct. of Cal.; Ex. O, Resignation with Charges Pending, In the matter of Ty Odell Clevenger, No. SBC-19-Q-30424, St. Bar Court of Cal.

Steven Biss has also had his law license suspended and been disciplined several times, including for assisting his client in “conduct he should have known was criminal or fraudulent.” Ex. P, Mem. Order, Va. St. Bar, ex rel Third Dist. Comm. v. Biss, Case No. CL07-1846, Cir. Ct. of the Cnty. of Chesterfield (suspending Biss one year and one day); Ex. Q, Order of Suspension, In the Matter of Steven Scott Biss, VSB Docket No. 09-032-078962 (suspension for “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation which reflects adversely on the lawyer’s fitness to practice law” by holding himself out as an attorney while his license was suspended); Ex. R, Mem. Order, In the Matter of Steven Scott Biss, VSB Docket No. 07-033-070921 (publicly reprimanding Biss). Earlier this year, Biss was admonished for taunting a pro se litigant in pleadings. Steele v. Goodman, 2019 WL 3367983 (E.D. Va. July 25, 2019). And, a sanctions motion is pending against Biss in Lokhova v. Halper for, among other things, misusing the litigation process to launch politically-motivated attacks and advance an agenda beyond the courthouse. Cause No. 1:19-cv-00632-LMB-JFA, Dkt. 85-1, attached hereto as Ex. S

As NPR states in its filings:

It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate case for severe sanctions than this one involving a litigant who knowingly misrepresented facts to this Court and his lawyers whose improper conduct has led to suspension and public reprimand and who are making similar misrepresentations in another lawsuit before this Court.

Along these lines, there are two related news articles that are worth reading, regarding Biss. The Fresno Bee (a McClatchy paper that is currently being sued by Rep. Devin Nunes, also represented by Biss) last month had quite an article describing Biss' history of being disciplined. It is a very long article.

A transcript from the case shows the judge was flabbergasted by Biss, who said he was representing 226 clients suing Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. over bad investments.

In fact, Biss represented fewer than 170 investors.

The investors Biss represented were seeking $124.5 million from Citigroup Global Markets. They alleged that brokers at Citigroup Global Markets had purposely misled investors.

“We’ve got four of five people in here who have signed sworn declarations saying they don’t know you from the man in the moon and they’ve never talked to any of the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit at the beginning. How is this possible?” asked Judge Kennelly, according to a court transcript.

Yikes. That article has many, many examples of questionable behavior by Biss. It also highlights yet another current case that Biss is involved in, Steele v. Goodman, in which Robert Steele is suing a YouTuber, Jason Goodman. Without going into all of the background there, Goodman last fall filed a motion to disqualify Biss, and included an email he had obtained from Biss' wife, Tanya Cornwell, in which she urged yet another online conspiracy theorist to sue Goodman, noting "I'm guessing a half a million bucks they will throw at you just to make it go away = catch it!" and also saying "anyways do contemplate suing Jason, he's likely insured."

There are a lot more rabbit holes to go down regarding the various cases that Biss is involved in, but it seems worth at least pointing to a Daily Beast story from last week, that talks about an alleged meeting of a group of people whose names are like a who's who of those represented by Biss -- including Butowski and Trevor FitzGibbon (whose lawsuit against Jesselyn Radack we've written about a few times to highlight Biss's questionable use of subpoenas to try to unearth the identity of the @DevinCow account). Also at the meeting is the internet character who was the recipient of the email sent by Biss's wife in the above Goodman case.

If that's all difficult to follow, and begins to feel like we should be tying red yarn to a corkboard, you're not wrong. But it does seem notable that Biss seems to continue filing these questionable lawsuits, and the various players all seem to have various connections to one another. Either way, the NPR filing has opened up even more concerns about Biss' legal practices.

Filed Under: david folkenflik, defamation, ed butowsky, rod wheeler, rule 11, sanctions, steven biss, ty clevinger
Companies: fox news

Alexander Vindman Now Threatens Bogus SLAPP Suit Against Fox News & Laura Ingraham

from the can-we-stop-with-the-slapps dept

SLAPP suits and SLAPP threats are flying back and forth these days. The latest is that Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, who is a key player in the impeachment hearings, is threatening a highly questionable defamation lawsuit against Fox News and Laura Ingraham, because she had on a guest who suggested Vindman was guilty of espionage (he's not). The threat letter was sent by David Pressman, a lawyer who works for Boies Schiller Flexner, a law firm which has a history of sending around bogus threat letters to the media for doing reporting.

Even if you think that Fox News is terrible (it is), that Ingraham is not to be trusted (she's not), and that her guests are fools (they are), this threat is still completely bogus and silly.

During their exchange, Ms. Ingraham said, “Here we have a U.S. national security official who is advising Ukraine, while working inside the White House, apparently against the president’s interest, and usually, they spoke in English. Isn’t that kind of an interesting angle on this story?”

“I found that astounding,” Mr. Yoo replied. “Some people might call that espionage.”

The Mr. Yoo in question is John Yoo, whose biggest claim to fame is writing the legal justifications for torture during the Bush administration. I wouldn't trust him to throw a ball to a dog, let alone opine on matters regarding the administration, but that doesn't mean that what he said was defamatory. As Ken "Popehat" White explained in a Twitter thread, even if everything Yoo and Ingraham said is ridiculous (and it is), there's nothing in there that rises to the level of defamation:

No matter which side of this you stand on, hopefully we can all agree that bogus threats of defamation, and silly cease and desist letters over people stating a (bad and dumb) opinion are not helping anyone.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, alexander vindman, cease and desist, david boies, david pressman, defamation, espionage, free speech, john yoo, lauara ingraham, slapp, threats
Companies: fox news