How Hulk Hogan & Peter Thiel Almost Made Sure That The Story Of R. Kelly's 'Cult' Stayed Unpublished

from the bad-news dept

I recognize that not everyone agrees that the jury verdict against Gawker in the case brought by Hulk Hogan was a disaster for the First Amendment. I disagree. As we explained, even if you dislike Gawker and believe that it was a terrible smut rag that deserved to go out of business, the lawsuit presented a clear blueprint via which the famous and wealthy could attempt to silence any publication -- even those doing legitimate reporting. We, somewhat obviously, are feeling the rather direct effects of that ourselves, given that we're facing a lawsuit filed by the same lawyer who represented Hogan.

But, here's yet another example of the chilling effects created by the Hogan verdict directly. You may have heard, recently, about a fairly astounding story, reported by famed music reporter Jim DeRogatis, that the singer R. Kelly was "holding women against their will in a 'cult.'". The story is quite incredible and detailed. It was published in Buzzfeed which, despite its reputation for viral videos and top 10 gif lists, has been publishing some amazing reporting over the past few years.

But the story of why it was in Buzzfeed, and how the Hulk Hogan verdict almost kept the story from being revealed at all is important, and highlights the chilling effects of the Hogan verdict, and how it is likely stifling other important stories about the rich and famous from being published. DeRogatis, beyond his many years of excellent reporting about music and the music world, has tangled with R. Kelly before. You may be familiar with some older controversies involving Kelly... and most of those were also broken by DeRogatis, starting way back in 2000, when he broke the story of R. Kelly having sex with teenaged girls. DeRogatis was also deeply involved in the criminal trial of Kelly a decade ago (in which Kelly was eventually found "not guilty.")

You can read the details of DeRogatis' latest story at Buzzfeed, but that's not the part that really interests us at Techdirt. Instead, it's the fact that multiple publications wouldn't publish this latest story -- often pointing to the Hulk Hogan verdict as the reason why. DeRogatis discussed the background to the story with Josh Levin at Slate, which includes this tidbit:

What was the reporting process like? Was most of that time spent trying to get people to talk?

Most of that time was spent, post–Hulk Hogan and Gawker, finding a media outlet that was willing to run it. I’ve been working with BuzzFeed since Wednesday afternoon, and those were 12-plus–hour days every single day until this morning.

So... that's interesting. Here you have a well-known, well-respected reporter who has a long history of breaking these kinds of stories about R. Kelly -- and the hardest part was finding a publication that would actually publish the story? Because of the Hogan verdict? Margaret Sullivan, over at the Washington Post goes deeper into the chilling effect of the Hogan verdict on DeRogatis's reporting saga.

Three separate media organizations were interested but got cold feet at the last minute, DeRogatis said. Each one, after investing months of work, backed away from the story that used named sources and documents to describe how women near Atlanta and Chicago were held as if in a cult, according to what parents and others had told police. (DeRogatis declined to name the news organizations because of his appreciation of the editors he worked with; they weren’t the ones who pulled the plug. They include a regional print publication, a world-famous multimedia behemoth and a radio-based digital outlet.)

“Gawker came up in a lot of those conversations,” DeRogatis said, referring to the snarky and risk-taking website that was put out of business last summer after a lawsuit brought by Terry Bollea, also known as Hulk Hogan. The invasion-of-privacy suit was bankrolled by billionaire Peter Thiel, a confidant of President Trump.

“Nobody wanted to take that risk.”

Nobody wanted to take that risk. To break a major story about a celebrity potentially holding women against their will. Argue all you want that Gawker was about sex and privacy, or that Gawker was sleazy -- none of that changes that the case created real chilling effects. It provided the rich and famous with a clear path to try to silence publications or scare them away from publishing true stories. And it put the fear of such attacks deep into the hearts of many media publications, including those with experienced legal teams.

As Sullivan concludes in her piece:

Plenty of people were disgusted by Gawker’s airing of the Hulk Hogan sex tape and, as a result, not unhappy to see the site go out of business. But some of them would be less pleased to know that a story like the R. Kelly reporting — or many others that we don’t know about — might never see the light of day.

But it's probably worse than that, because at least the Kelly piece was published. We'll probably never know about a variety of other -- potentially important and newsworthy -- stories that aren't getting published at all out of a fear over these kinds of lawsuits. Even when the reporting is solid and the reporters and editors and lawyers all believe the story is protected speech, just the threat of these kinds of lawsuits can scare away many publications and completely kill important stories. This is why having a strong First Amendment matters, and it's why verdicts like the Hogan one against Gawker can cause so many problems even if -- actually especially if -- you disliked Gawker. We should be even more serious about protecting the free speech rights of those we disagree with, as they often need those protections the most.

Filed Under: charles harder, chilling effects, hulk hogan, jim derogatis, peter thiel, r. kelly, reporting, slapp
Companies: buzzfeed, gawker

Here's The Truth: Shiva Ayyadurai Didn't Invent Email

from the let's-try-this-again dept

So, yesterday we wrote about how Nick Denton had settled all the remaining legal disputes that Gawker had involving three lawsuits filed by lawyer Charles Harder. Most of the attention was paid to the big one -- the settlement with Hulk Hogan. We, however, focused on one of the other cases, since it was one that we followed closely and which showed how Peter Thiel was full of shit in claiming he only bankrolled these anti-Gawker lawsuits to "protect privacy" (and, yes, it's hilarious to see the early backer of both Facebook and Palantir pretending to care about privacy).

The case of Shiva Ayyadurai is the really telling one. For almost five years now, we've been among those explaining why Shiva Ayyadurai's claim that he invented email is complete bullshit. It's not true. Not even remotely. What does appear to be true is that as a fairly bright kid, Ayyadurai was working for a small college in New Jersey and he wrote an electronic messaging program for the school, which he named Email. It was not the first. It was not the last. It was nothing special. Nothing about what Ayyadurrai did was new -- even if he came up with the ideas entirely on his own. Basically every feature that he put in the application was previously discussed on open mailing lists and RFCs about the internet and the messaging systems that would be grafted onto it -- sometimes many years earlier. Ayyadurai tries to rely on the fact that he got a copyright for his program as proof, hoping to confuse people who don't understand the difference between a copyright and a patent. As we've noted in the past: Microsoft has a copyright on the "Windows" operating system. That doesn't mean it invented windows-based graphical user interfaces (because it did not).

Apparently, part of the settlement involved Ayyadurai getting $750,000 along with the agreement to take down the article (it's not entirely clear to me if the article was still up, since Univision had already taken it down). As plenty of people quickly noted on Twitter this was insane. Ayyadurai has spent many years falsely claiming to have invented email and trying to tarnish the obituaries of Ray Tomlinson who was critical in the creation of email (though was humble enough to admit that no one individual actually "invented" email). And now he was getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for suing a news site that correctly explained the actual truth: Shiva Ayyadurai did not invent email. I'm sure a good chunk of that money is going to Charles Harder. Who knows if any of it makes its way back to Peter Thiel, who recently explained that he had to help Hulk Hogan because mere "single digit millionaires" couldn't fight back.

In response to this, Ayyadurai has put out a self-congratulatory press release claiming that the settlement supports his blatantly false claims:

Certain of the settlement terms are incorporated within Gawker Media's latest proposed plan of liquidation, filed today, and include a proposed settlement payment to Dr. Ayyadurai and removal of the article at issue. More details will be forthcoming. Dr. Ayyadurai stated: "History will reflect that this settlement is a victory for truth."

No, it's not. It's a victory for bullshit. It's a victory for trying to rewrite history and smear the actual truth. And it was aided by Peter Thiel. I do wonder, though, if Ayyadurai continues to sue publications that properly point out that he is not telling the truth, and targets us, if Thiel will come to our aid. Hell, I'm not even a single-digit millionaire. So, clearly, he's going to help us out, right?

Let's discuss some truth: Ayyadurai did not invent email. Ayyadurai also filed a highly questionable lawsuit over a news story correctly claiming he did not invent email. Ayyadurai's case was only settled because Nick Denton and what remains of Gawker recognized that it was easier to move on with things and end these cases. For Peter Thiel to champion this and for Ayyadurai to claim that his little spat -- which got caught up in the whirlwind of a billionaire's personal grudge -- is a "victory for truth" is complete bullshit. That's the truth.

Filed Under: censorship, charles harder, defamation, email, hulk hogan, inventor of email, peter thiel, shiva ayyadurai, truth
Companies: gawker

Ridiculous: Nick Denton Settles Remaining Charles Harder Lawsuits, Agrees To Delete Perfectly True Stories

from the that's-fucked-up dept

Congrats Peter Thiel: you've successfully censored true stories reported by the press. Just a little while ago, Nick Denton posted that the remaining three cases filed by lawyer Charles Harder against Gawker, Denton and some reporters had been settled, with the agreement to remove the stories. Harder, of course, is the lawyer that Peter Thiel set up with his own practice, with the stated mission of filing lawsuits that would kill Gawker. Thiel/Harder "won" back when this effort forced Gawker into bankruptcy and then a fire sale to Univision. But now the remaining stories have been officially killed off. This includes the famous Hulk Hogan story and case -- meaning that the appeal, which basically every lawyer admits would have resulted in overturning the lower court's jury verdict, is dead. I know the Gawker haters will cheer this outright censorship (or, worse, insist that this proves that the case was legitimate -- despite the fact it never was). But let's focus on one of the other stories that is getting censored here thanks to Peter Thiel's actions.

It's the one that we wrote about the most: Shiva Ayyaudrai claims to have invented email when he was a kid. He did not. I won't go through all the details again, but as a kid in 1978, Ayyadurai did apparently create (independently) a software program for electronic mail for a college he worked for. By all accounts, it was a good program that was useful. He named it EMAIL and eventually registered a copyright for that piece of software. That's it. It's a neat accomplishment for a kid. But it is not "inventing email" by any stretch of the imagination.

That's because (1) every single thing that Ayyadurai did had already been done elsewhere, often many years earlier, and (2) all of that other work was done in public settings via RFCs and the process that eventually led to the email systems that we use today. Ayyadurai's email system... contributed to nothing. It was late to the game and it never went any further. Again, it was impressive that as a kid he basically independently created an electronic mailing system, but that's different from "inventing email." But, for whatever reason, Ayyadurai has staked his entire identity on the outright false claim that he invented email. He's written a book about it. He has a whole webpage about it. And he keeps pushing the story on the press, including teaming up with a famous PR guy and (???) Noam Chomsky to argue that there was a giant conspiracy to deny him his rightful designation as the inventor of email. He often claims this is because he's of Indian descent, ignoring that one of the actual inventors of email, on RFC 561 is Abhay Bhushan (who also created FTP) and is, also, of Indian descent.

Ayyadurai is so obsessed with his false claim of creating email, that he even went on a petulant Twitter rampage after one of the actual creators of email, Ray Tomlinson, passed away earlier this year, yelling at any journalist who accurately credited Tomlinson's work on email.

Along with us, one of the other publications that highlighted Ayyadurai's bullshit claims was... Gawker. And, then, in May Ayyadurai sued Gawker using Charles Harder as his lawyer, over two Gawker articles on Ayyadurai. Those articles were completely accurate. Ayyadurai did not invent email. He wants the world to believe he did, despite mountains of evidence that says he's wrong. Gawker's reporting was entirely accurate. This is not about "sex tapes" or "privacy" or any of the stuff people want to talk about with the Hulk Hogan story. This was exposing someone who was blatantly misrepresenting history for his own personal aggrandizing.

And now it's gone, because continuing to fight the lawsuit was too much. As Denton notes:

But all-out legal war with Thiel would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight.

Denton notes that, especially given the reporters who were directly sued in these cases, it was best to just move on to "focus on activities more productive than endless litigation. Life is short, for most of us."

That's true, but it's also bullshit. Ayyadurai has been given the heckler's veto and will likely crow about how this vindicates him. He's tried to twist a variety of other things as "proof" that he's the inventor of email. As of writing this he hasn't said anything on his Twitter feed, other than to retweet someone saying "congratulations to [Shiva], inventor of email" and someone else tweeting about the Denton story. Of course, perhaps because he's too busy promoting some sketchy "health" system and conspiracy theories about the election -- oh, and also having conversations with confirmed asshole and colleague in bullshit, censorious lawsuits, actor James Woods.

So, not only is he not the inventor of email, he's also pretty clueless about how polls work and basic statistics too. Seems like a real winner.

Filed Under: censorship, charles harder, defamation, email, hulk hogan, inventor of email, nick denton, peter thiel, shiva ayyadurai
Companies: gawker

Univision Execs Have No Backbone: Pull A Bunch Of Gawker Stories Over Legal Disputes

from the no-credibility dept

People celebrating the "demise" of Gawker in being forced into bankruptcy by a questionable lawsuit and ruling from Hulk Hogan, financed by Peter Thiel, keep insisting that it has no real impact on the freedom of the press. And yet... things keep showing that's wrong. Gawker filed for bankruptcy and sold off its assets to media giant Univision, which agreed to close down the flagship Gawker site and redistribute some of the reporters to other sites. But late Friday, Univision management made another decision, and this one is horrific: they agreed to delete six stories on the site (with a seventh one being considered) because those stories were the subject of lawsuits against Gawker.

The reasoning given by Univision is that it only agreed to buy the assets of Gawker, not the liabilities, and keeping those stories posted gave it liability. First of all, this is wrong on the legal side of things. As Gawker's executive editor, John Cook (who fought this decision) notes, Univision doesn't take on the liability here:

Though the posts were published by Gawker Media, and therefore under the so-called “first publication rule” should only be the legal responsibility of the Gawker Media estate being left behind in the transaction, Unimoda’s legal analysis was that the continued publication of the posts under the new entitity would constitute the adoption of liability, and that Unimoda is therefore obligated to delete them.

But that's not the most disturbing thing here. The really problematic issue is that the stories that are being removed involve stories where the lawsuits are almost entirely completely bogus SLAPP suits designed to annoy Gawker, rather than with any serious legal basis -- for example, the two stories that Gawker published about Shiva Ayyadurai, the guy who keeps trying to convince the world that he invented email when he didn't. We've discussed Ayyadurai and his bogus claims many times, and also covered the lawsuit. There is no legitimate reason to take down those posts.

Perhaps even more incredible is that Univision also agreed to take down the story that nutty troll Chuck C. Johnson had filed a lawsuit against Gawker. That's a lawsuit that is so ridiculous it was laughed out of court in Missouri. And while Johnson filed a nearly identical lawsuit (including references to Missouri) in California, it was similarly going nowhere, and Johnson recently said that he'd dropped the case.

And yet Univision voted to delete the story anyway.

This is... bad. It's one thing to make a decision to pull a story once you've analyzed the situation and decided that the story has problems and should be pulled. But that's not what happened here. Univision execs flat out told Cook that this was solely about not taking on the liability. In other words, Univision has absolutely zero backbone to stand up for its journalists. That's shameful.

This move basically immediately does two things. First, it alerts anyone who wants a heckler's veto to threaten Univision with a lawsuit. Second, it should immediately cause any good journalist working for Univision or its properties (including Gawker and Fusion) to start looking for a new job elsewhere. If you can't have your publisher back you up on things like this, that's a dangerous place for a reporter to work. Kudos to Cook for trying to stand up to Univision, but if those execs wouldn't listen to him, the company's got really big problems.

I communicated to Felipe and Jay in the strongest terms that deleting these posts is a mistake, and that disappearing true posts about public figures simply because they have been targeted by a lawyer who conspired with a vindictive billionaire to destroy this company is an affront to the very editorial ethos that has made us successful enough to be worth acquiring. I told them that I am proud that this company refused to delete its accurate posts about Shiva Ayudurrai’s false claim to have invented the email system of communication, and that I am proud that our decision not to take down accurate posts about Mitch Williams’ meltdown at a children’s baseball game was vindicated by a federal judge, who ruled in our favor in his case against us. I am mortified to see them taken down now. We are at the center of an unprecedented assault on the ability of reporters and editors to challenge and critique public figures. While I believe that Univision is a company that values and defends aggressive, independent reporting, the decision to remove these posts is, in my view, at odds with its tradition of confronting bullies with honesty.

Univision just did a big thing badly. And it sullies the company's reputation and brand, and it makes all of the company's remaining journalistic staff look bad.

And, of course, this is the internet, where trying to make stuff disappear never works. I went over to archive.is soon after the announcement came out (and before the stories had been taken down) and every single one had been re-archived (many had been previously archived) within the previous hour. So if you're curious what was in the stories too hot for Univision's backboneless execs, here they are:

• The Inventor of Email Did Not Invent Email?
• Corruption, Lies, and Death Threats: The Crazy Story of the Man Who Pretended to Invent Email
• Man Acquitted Of Sexual Assault Sues Blog For Calling Him Serial Rapist
• Wait, Did Clowntroll Blogger Chuck Johnson Shit On The Floor One Time?
• Uber Driver in California Will Be Considered Employee, Not Contractor
• Mitch Williams Ejected From Child's Baseball Game For Arguing, Cursing
• Witnesses: Mitch Williams Called Child "A Pussy," Ordered Beanball

This is why we need publications that don't back down in the face of SLAPP suits. This is why we need stronger anti-SLAPP laws (and a federal anti-SLAPP law). This is why we express concerns about billionaires ganging up to sue publications out of existence in a vengeance play. Publications are vulnerable, but they're supposed to stand up to bogus threats, not cave in out of fear.

Filed Under: backbone, chuck johnson, defamation, heckler's veto, hulk hogan, journalism, liabilities, shiva ayyadurai
Companies: gawker, univision

Melania Trump Sues Daily Mail & A Blogger Over Stories, Using Peter Thiel/Hulk Hogan's Lawyer

from the gotta-sue-gotta-sue dept

Last week, we wrote about lawyer Charles Harder -- most well known as the lawyer that Peter Thiel set up with the mission of destroying Gawker -- sending out defamation threat letters on behalf of Donald Trump's wife, Melania Trump. The main threat was to the Daily Mail, for posting a story about a book and magazine article that made some accusations claiming that Melania had worked as an escort via the modeling agency that she worked for. As I noted in the original post, while the story may be false, I didn't see how defamation charges would stick, seeing as the Daily Mail was reporting (accurately) on what the article and book had published, and also noted some inconsistencies and questions about how factual the allegations were. In addition, I still don't see how they could get to the "with actual malice" standard required for defamation of a public figure.

Either way, it appears that Melania and Harder have decided to go for it, and have filed a defamation lawsuit against the Daily Mail, filed in Maryland (for what it's worth, in the comments to our last story, some accused me of being mistaken for using US defamation law, since the Daily Mail is in the UK -- but since it was a US lawyer, it seemed fairly obvious that any lawsuit would likely be in the US -- and that's now been proven true). You can read the filing here.

Trump asserts that the The Daily Mail consciously doubted the truth of the claims in the article, but decided to publish it anyway, and that reporters there can't simply rely on "unsubstantiated" claims and "an unauthorized book written by malicious and bitter 'reporters' who have never met or spoken to Ms. Trump."

"The conduct of Daily Mail was despicable, abhorrent, intentional, malicious and oppressive, and thus justifies an award of punitive damages," states the complaint.

Besides defamation, Trump is also suing for tortious interference, contending that the published statements have gotten in the way of her "numerous" licensing and endorsement deals.

The lawsuit not only targets the Daily Mail, but also a blogger by the name of Webster Griffin Tarpley who had written about Melania Trump as well on his Tarpley.net website. It may seem a bit odd to be going after a random blogger, though from the lawsuit, it seems like the case against Tarpley is at least somewhat stronger. Tarpley seemed to make a number of statements of fact that, if false, may very well be defamatory. What is a bit odd is that Harder had sent a threat letter to Tarpley, and he removed the blog post almost immediately and apologized. That doesn't (in any way) get him off the hook if the article was defamatory, but it's a bit odd to still sue after the removal. Separately, it's at least marginally difficult to believe the claims, as stated in the lawsuit, that this random blog post on a blog almost no one has heard of could somehow "cause substantial damage" to Melania Trump's "business, career, reputation and her actual and prospective economic relationships." What business is not going to do business with Melania Trump because a random blogger made some false statements about her?

It will be interesting to see how this case progresses. At a first pass, it seems like the Daily Mail has a much stronger argument than the blogger, but it's still bizarre that the potential First Lady to be would be spending time suing a random blogger for an article that, from the quotes in the lawsuit, could likely be seen as rhetorical hyperbole. And, really, all that the lawsuit does is bring more attention to the original claims about Trump. It's possible that Tarpley was included just for jurisdiction purposes, to get the case into a Maryland court (notably: Maryland has a famously weak anti-SLAPP law, and efforts to improve it have failed). Still, the whole case seems odd, and seems like, once again, using the courts to bully publications.

Filed Under: charles harder, defamation, donald trump, hulk hogan, melania trump, peter thiel, webster griffin tarpley
Companies: daily mail

Gawker Files For Bankruptcy, Begins Process Of Auctioning Itself Off

from the peter-thiel-gets-a-notch-in-his-belt dept

No matter what you think of Gawker, this is unfortunate news. The company has officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and begun the process of auctioning off its assets. Chapter 11 is an attempt to restructure debts (which include -- mostly -- the ~$130 million owed to Hulk Hogan after venture capitalist Peter Thiel funded Hogan's questionable lawsuit against Gawker). You can read the bankruptcy petition, but this is the main thing you need to know: Yeah, that's the beginning of the list of their 20 largest creditors and it starts with Hogan's "disputed" $130 million... and second place is some lawyers for $115k. So we're talking a pretty big difference from the number 1 creditor to the number 2 creditor. Of course, as with many Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings, this is more about process than substance. The filing potentially lets Gawker stop the process on some other things and explore the various alternatives, including a fairly likely sale to another player. It doesn't mean that the company is shutting down. Update: Apparently the plan is for Ziff Davis to buy Gawker, though others could potentially get into the bidding.

Either way, this is still unfortunate. Even if you believe the Hogan case was justified (and I think you're wrong about that), we should still be concerned when a billionaire basically sets out to destroy a media organization through a variety of lawsuits (many of which appear to be extremely questionable).

What if the next billionaire who gets upset about coverage targets a publication you do like? And don't say that it won't matter if that publication doesn't do anything wrong. Just the lawsuits alone can kill a company. And, even worse, the threat of lawsuits may create a massive chilling effect on what companies publish and how they go about their reporting. And disagree with Gawker's decisions and tactics all you want, the company did break a ton of important news stories. While this does not mean the end of Gawker, it's certainly the crippling of Gawker, and that should be a concern for anyone who believes in a free and open press.

Filed Under: bankruptcy, chapter 11, free press, hulk hogan, lawsuits, nick denton, peter thiel
Companies: gawker

Yes, A Billionaire Looking To Destroy A Media Organization Through Lawsuits Is A Big Deal Even If You Don't Like The Media Organization

from the slapp dept

So I had thought that our post yesterday about Peter Thiel allegedly financing Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker would be the only time we posted about that story, but a few things have happened that seem to merit a further post. First, Thiel has admitted to it, and insisted that he views it as "philanthropy." There are a number of claims that Thiel makes that are quite troubling. First, he admits that he didn't just back Hogan, but rather gave lawyers money to go hunting for anyone who might want to sue Gawker, directly out of spite.

He said that he hired a legal team several years ago to look for cases that he could help financially support. “Without going into all the details, we would get in touch with the plaintiffs who otherwise would have accepted a pittance for a settlement, and they were obviously quite happy to have this sort of support,” he said. “In a way very similar to how a plaintiff’s lawyer on contingency would do it.” Mr. Thiel declined to disclose what other cases he had supported but there are at least two current cases against Gawker.

Later on he admits: "It's safe to say this is not the only [case]."

This also seems ethically dubious, even if it's perfectly legal. I, frankly, don't have a huge concern over people funding others' lawsuits. While it can be abused, you can also see where it could be helpful for people who otherwise couldn't afford the legal costs. That said, specifically funding lawyers to go hunting for plaintiffs with the deliberate intent of killing a media publication? That's problematic. And that's true no matter how terrible you think Gawker is as a media property.

Incredibly, Thiel, who has given a large amount of money to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and who has claimed to be a big supporter of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, pulled a classic "I support freedom of speech, but..." line in response to questions along those lines, basically saying that he doesn't think Gawker counts.

He said he did not believe his actions were contradictory. “I refuse to believe that journalism means massive privacy violations,” he said. “I think much more highly of journalists than that. It’s precisely because I respect journalists that I do not believe they are endangered by fighting back against Gawker.”

He continued, “It’s not like it is some sort of speaking truth to power or something going on here. The way I’ve thought about this is that Gawker has been a singularly terrible bully. In a way, if I didn’t think Gawker was unique, I wouldn’t have done any of this. If the entire media was more or less like this, this would be like trying to boil the ocean.” Mr. Thiel said he had not targeted any other media companies.

And this brings me to the second reason I'm posting more on this story: a surprising number of people (to me) keep supporting Thiel in this, and arguing that because what Gawker did was so horrible that this vendetta against them is okay. This is dangerous thinking. And I wanted to dig in on why it's so dangerous. First, there's the obvious: freedom of expression is supposed to protect the speech you dislike the most. Otherwise, we wouldn't need it. Carving it out because he thinks they're "bullies" is the kind of stuff that the First Amendment doesn't allow.

Second, the idea that this won't impact other journalism organizations is hogwash. As Felix Salmon wrote, this gives other billionaires a "dangerous blueprint" to be vindictive against any publication they dislike. Basically, he notes that publications are always extra careful about writing about notoriously litigious billionaires. But Thiel's plan is much more dubious: just have lawyers watching for anyone else who may be aggrieved, where a publication maybe wasn't quite as careful, and then mount a series of lawsuits, some perhaps more dubious than others (hold that thought...) to bury the company in legal expenses. Salmon points out that this opens up a huge number of possibilities for others:

If Thiel’s strategy works against Gawker, it could be used by any billionaire against any media organization. Sheldon Adelson, Donald Trump, the list goes on and on. Up until now, they’ve mostly been content suing news organizations as plaintiffs, over stories which name them. But Thiel has shown them how to go thermonuclear: bankroll other lawsuits, as many as it takes, and bankrupt the news organization that way. Very few companies have the legal wherewithal to withstand such a barrage.

Both Sheldon Adelson and Donald Trump have done vindictive SLAPP suits against news publications that have said things they didn't appreciate. And then there was the infamous case of billionaire Frank VanderSloot who waged a years long SLAPP legal campaign against Mother Jones over reporting he didn't like.

Josh Marshall, over at Talking Points Memo also does a good job of showing why this is so concerning:

Regardless of his politics, this news should disturb everyone. People talk a lot about the dominance of the 1% or in this case more like a tiny fraction of the 1%. But being able to give massive political contributions actually pales in comparison to the impact of being able to destroy a publication you don't like by combining the machinery of the courts with anonymity and unlimited funds to bleed a publication dry.

We don't have to go any further than Donald Trump to know that the incredibly rich often use frivolous litigation to intimidate critics and bludgeon enemies. Mother Jones had a lawsuit like this, clearly intended to bleed them dry through endless legal expenses. They won, though at a steep cost. But when bully plutocrats do so in their own name there is at least a self-correcting dynamic at work. A plaintiff in a libel suit opens him or herself up to reputational harm and highly intrusive legal discovery which is often enough to scare people away. (Remember, when Trump sued Tim O'Brien for publishing Trump insiders' claims that Trump was worth less than $250 million dollars, Trump was eventually forced to show O'Brien's lawyers his tax returns.) In some ways, this lines up with something I noted in my 'Brittle Grip' series of posts: growing calls from the extremely rich to not only be able to use their money without limit to shape the political process but to do so anonymously to avoid being "intimidated" or "vilified".

And even if you still think it's okay because (1) Gawker is awful or (2) "publishing a sex tape shouldn't be protected," consider, again, that Thiel has admitted that he's funding more lawsuits against Gawker. I currently know of at least four other lawsuits against Gawker -- with at least three of them using the same lawyer as Hogan used. And those lawsuits are ridiculous. We've written about both the Shiva Ayyadurai lawsuit (with the same lawyer) in which he's mad that Gawker accurately pointed out that Ayyadurai did not invent email, and the laugh out loud bad lawsuit by Chuck Johnson against Gawker. For what it's worth, Ayyadurai denies knowledge "of any behind-the-scenes financial arrangements involving my attorneys and anyone else." So perhaps Thiel is not funding his lawsuit, but with Thiel admitting to funding others, there aren't that many other choices.

Taken as a whole, this takes SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) to entirely new levels. Flooding the zone with lawsuits, even if some have validity, with the sole admitted purpose of trying to destroy a publication you don't like has tremendous chilling effects on the press. Wired, with its tongue firmly in cheek, made this point fantastically with an article entitled How Can We Make You Happy Today, Peter Thiel? which is paragraph after paragraph of this kind of thing:

If you don’t know who Peter Thiel is, set your swoon-sockets to Stun, because Peter Thiel is the best—just an awesome, handsome, awesome guy—and we would never want to give the impression that we think otherwise. See how happy he is in this picture below? That’s how we want him to look every time he thinks about his ol’ buddies at Wired: “Great, great team. Total pros. Definitely not gonna get mad and team up with a former wrestler to secretly bankroll a lawsuit against them, and all because I didn’t like what they said about me.”

Three cheers for Peter Thiel!

Yes, it's exaggerated for comedic purposes, but the chilling effect can be very, very real. Publications that don't want to face such a vindictive campaign are going to stay silent. And that's a serious concern.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Spiers highlights another point on all of this, focusing mainly on the fact that Thiel's response is massively out of proportion to any actual harm. Her focus is on whether or not this activity coming to light should worry entrepreneurs who work with Thiel, suggesting "I have no sense of proportionality, and might go completely apeshit on you for the slight infraction, or if godforbid we just have a simple misunderstanding."

Or, as a way of summing it up, if you think that it's okay for Thiel to do this because you think that Gawker consists of a bunch of jackasses, be afraid, because there's someone out there who thinks you're a jackass too. And just hope they're not a billionaire who has the free resources to wait for any attempt to destroy you... and then call it "philanthropy."

Hate on Gawker all you want. But this blueprint of trying to bury a company in legal fees, just out of spite, should worry everyone if you believe in freedom of the press. There's a reason that we're so concerned with typical SLAPP suits, and why we keep asking for stronger state anti-SLAPP laws and a federal anti-SLAPP law. Thiel's actions make this even more important today than ever before.

Filed Under: billionaires, chuck johnson, free press, hulk hogan, lawsuits, peter thiel, shiva ayyadurai, slapp, threats
Companies: gawker

Silicon Valley Billionaire Peter Thiel Accused Of Financing Hulk Hogan's Ridiculous Lawsuits Against Gawker

from the wtf,-peter? dept

So here's a crazy and unfortunate story. On Monday evening, the NY Times posted a rather weird story suggesting that there was someone with a grudge against Gawker funding the various lawsuits against the site, including Hulk Hogan's multiple lawsuits (he recently filed another one, even more ridiculous than the first -- which resulted in a $115 million verdict against Gawker that hopefully will get tossed on appeal). The NYT piece was weird in that it was pure innuendo -- just saying that Gawker's Nick Denton was increasingly sure that someone who really disliked the site was funding the lawsuits. It was surprising that the NY Times ran it given the lack of anything beyond speculation and rumor. And then, about 24 hours later, Forbes publishes a story saying that it's well-known billionaire Peter Thiel funding the lawsuit (warning: Forbes' ridiculous anti-adblock policy means you may not be able to read that article):

Peter Thiel, a PayPal cofounder and one of the earliest backers of Facebook, has been secretly covering the expenses for Hulk Hogan’s lawsuits against online news organization Gawker Media. According to people familiar with the situation who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, Thiel, a cofounder and partner at Founders Fund, has played a lead role in bankrolling the cases Terry Bollea, a.k.a. Hogan, brought against New York-based Gawker. Hogan is being represented by Charles Harder, a prominent Los Angeles-based lawyer.

First off, it's perhaps no surprise that Thiel is very anti-Gawker. Lots of people dislike Gawker, and many of them have really good reasons to dislike Gawker. Its Silicon Valley coverage, in particular, was often terrible and basically just wrong. Its Valleywag publication often went for snark and conspiracy over reality. In Thiel's case, he has a much more direct reason for hating Gawker. In 2007, the publication outed him for no reason at all other than because it wanted to do so.

That said: this is insane. Thiel has his quirks, and has a reputation for supporting extreme political causes (that then, unfortunately, lead many outside of Silicon Valley to think his views are representative of the Valley), but funding a lawsuit (or possibly a series of lawsuits) that is flat out designed to undermine the First Amendment goes beyond what most people would expect. And that's doubly true given that his lawsuits against Gawker could have serious damage on free speech on the internet. It's one thing to hate Gawker and to wish its demise. It's another thing entirely to fund a series of lawsuits that chill expression online.

For what it's worth, it's also worth noting (as both of the articles linked above do), that the same lawyer who represented Hogan, and who Thiel is allegedly paying, is also the lawyer handling Shiva Ayyadurai's ridiculous lawsuit against Gawker, which cites the Hogan case for support. In our write-up of that ridiculous lawsuit, we noted that it looked like Ayyadurai was inspired by Hogan's victory, but we didn't realize that it was the same lawyer, and possibly funded from the same source.

For what it's worth, there are questions about if other lawsuits against Gawker are also being funded by Thiel, and you have to at least wonder if that includes Chuck Johnson's ridiculous defamation lawsuit against Gawker. As you may recall, Johnson struck out in Missouri, but filed the identical suit in California. Ayyadurai's lawsuit cites Johnson's lawsuit as proof of Gawker's pattern of bad behavior, even though both lawsuits are ridiculous. But it's also worth noting that Johnson and Thiel actually appear to have some political similarities, including both becoming strong Donald Trump supporters (Thiel is, famously, a Trump delegate, while Johnson says he's an alternate).

As a bit of an aside, how much more terrifying is it now when you hear Trump talk about "opening up" libel laws to make it easier to sue the press -- or him praising the district court win by Hogan over Gawker?

Thiel has obviously had quite a bit of success on the internet with Paypal, and then leveraging that into the first money into Facebook, along with helping to found Palantir (though that company is raising questions lately as well). He's also funded lots of other companies and famously supported Ron Paul and certain libertarian causes. But a lawsuit against an online publication solely out of vindictiveness (even if his hatred of the publication is for perfectly valid reasons) is a terrible, terrible idea that seems to go against his supposed libertarian views. It's also just petty and vindictive, and only cements in the misleading idea that Silicon Valley is full of ego-maniacal billionaires for whom the ends always justify the means.

Filed Under: charles harder, chuck johnson, defamation, financing lawsuits, free speech, hulk hogan, lawsuits, peter thiel, privacy, shiva ayyadurai
Companies: gawker

Donald Trump Thinks Hulk Hogan/Gawker Jury Award Is Good For His Plans To 'Open Up' Libel Laws

from the we-live-in-bizarre-times dept

We've written about Donald Trump's announced plans to "open up libel laws" which was specifically directed at the Washington Post, which he argued was purposely writing bad articles about him. Despite the fact that, even as President, he can't really change such laws (there's a little First Amendment issue to deal with), we noted that he can create real problems for free expression. For example, by blocking a federal anti-SLAPP bill from becoming law. And Trump is no stranger to SLAPP suits that are used to threaten or filed solely to silence people. He's threatened or sued an awful lot of people over perceived slights, such as claiming it was defamation to post a picture of him next to a picture of South Carolina murderer Dylann Roof. And then, of course, there's the famous case where he sued reporter Tim O'Brien for writing a book about him (that was actually mostly positive), but which pointed out that he was probably "only" worth a few hundred million dollars, rather than $10 billion. Trump lost that suit big time, and was basically humiliated in the process, but still insists that he basically won the lawsuit:

@julesmattsson Wrong, totally proved my case but didn't get damages because the libel laws in this Country suck!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2013

Just a couple of weeks ago, in an article in the Washington Post, Trump flat out admitted that the lawsuit against O'Brien was a SLAPP suit, designed solely as a nuisance to O'Brien:

Trump said in an interview that he knew he couldn’t win the suit but brought it anyway to make a point. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

As Paul Levy noted in response, this blatant admission of filing the lawsuit for malicious reasons is exactly why we need a federal anti-SLAPP law to protect against the very nuisance lawsuits Trump has a history of filing (and apparently no shame in admitting).

Earlier this week, Trump then went to the very same Washington Post which he had threatened to take on after opening up libel laws ("If I become President, oh, are they going to have problems. They're going to have such problems," he said about the Washington Post), and met with the editorial board for an on-the-record meeting. The audio and transcript are... kind of incredible. Lots of people have had fun mimicking Trump's short-sentence, roundabout answers, but to see them all written out is pretty impressive. There's lots in the interview that is absolutely crazy, but we'll just focus on the defamation stuff here, and the fact that apparently, he's super excited about Hulk Hogan's win over Gawker, thinking (incorrectly) that it had something to do with libel and might be useful to him:

RYAN: Mr. Trump, you’ve mentioned many times during the campaign, in fact including this morning, instances you feel where the press has been biased or unfair or outright false in their reporting, and you’ve mentioned that you want to “open up” the libel laws. You’ve said that several times.

TRUMP: I might not have to, based on Gawker. Right?

[CROSSTALK]

TRUMP: That was an amazing—

Because of the Trumpian nature of the interview, this discussion actually goes on for a while and sometimes twists into totally unrelated areas of conversation. I want to cover the high points, while leaving in the full context, but in some areas it's difficult. However, just the fact that Trump is excited about not needing to "open up" libel laws because of the Gawker jury award is exactly the kind of point I was trying to make with my post about that decision. Giving people who like to sue or threaten to sue another "weapon" at their disposal, even if they know or should know that such lawsuits are frivolous, means they will be abused. Here we have a serial abuser of defamation laws, someone who has proudly admitted exactly that, now excited about a ruling that's not even a defamation ruling, but which opens up the press to more costly legal disputes.

Washington Post Publisher Frederick Ryan Jr. continues to push Trump on this issue:

RYAN: My question is not so much why you feel they should be open but how. What presidential powers and executive actions would you take to open up the libel laws?

TRUMP: Okay, look, I’ve had stories written about me – by your newspaper and by others – that are so false, that are written with such hatred – I’m not a bad person. I’m just doing my thing – I’m, you know, running, I want to do something that’s good. It’s not an easy thing to do. I had a nice life until I did this, you know. This is a very difficult thing to do. In fact I’ve always heard that if you’re a very successful person you can’t run for office. And I can understand that. You’ll do a hundred deals, and you’ll do one bad one or two bad ones — that’s all they read about are the bad ones. They don’t read about the one hundred and fifty great ones that you had. And even some of the ones they write that are good, they make them sound bad. You know, so I’ve always heard that. I’ve heard that if you’re successful – very successful – you just can’t run for—

Notice the meandering answer again. He seems to think that anything that makes him look like a "bad person" is defamatory. But that's not how defamation law works. And notice, of course, that he never actually answers the question of what he can actually do. So Ryan pushes on, and Trump goes back to the Gawker "example":

RYAN: But how would you fix that? You’ve said that you would open up the libel laws.

TRUMP: What I would do, what I would do is I’d – well right now the libel laws, I mean I must tell you that the Hulk Hogan thing was a tremendous shock to me because – not only the amount and the fact that he had the victory — because for the most part I think libel laws almost don’t exist in this country, you know, based on, based on everything I’ve seen and watched and everything else, and I just think that if a paper writes something wrong — media, when I say paper I’m talking about media. I think that they can do a retraction if they’re wrong. They should at least try to get it right. And if they don’t do a retraction, they should, they should you know have a form of a trial. I don’t want to impede free press, by the way. The last thing I would want to do is that. But I mean I can only speak for – I probably get more – do I, I mean, you would know, do I get more publicity than any human being on the earth? Okay? I mean, [Editor’s note: Trump points at Ruth Marcus] she kills me, this one – that’s okay, nice woman.

Once again, he doesn't actually answer the question. He just says he'd like newspapers to do retractions when they're wrong. And that's a perfectly reasonable policy that many newspapers actually do try to follow. But it's got nothing to do with the law or what he could do as President. And it has nothing to do with if people write mean things about him that are truthful or are opinions that he doesn't like.

Thankfully, Ryan doesn't let up:

RYAN: Would you expand, for example, prior restraints against publications?

TRUMP: No, I would just say this. All I want is fairness. So unfair. I have stories and you have no recourse, you have no recourse whatsoever because the laws are really impotent.

MARCUS: So in a better world would you be able to sue me?

TRUMP: In a better world — no — in a better world I would be able to get a retraction or a correction. Not even a retraction, a correction.

RYAN: Well, now, you’ve been a plaintiff in libel suits so you know a little bit of the elements …

TRUMP: I had one basic big libel suit, it was a very bad system, it was New Jersey. I had a great judge, the first one, and I was going to win it. And then I had another good judge, the second one, and then they kept switching judges. And the third one was a bad judge. That’s what happened. But, uh…

So, again, he's never actually said what he would do as President to "open up" libel laws, and has supported Hulk Hogan's case against Gawker, which doesn't actually involve libel laws -- just punishing the press. And then he wants "fairness." And yet this is the same guy who just admitted to the very same newspaper that he once filed a defamation lawsuit because he knew it would force a reporter who had much less money than he did to outspend him in court. Fairness. Besides, what is he talking about saying that he has no recourse. He's got plenty of recourse. The press laps up and reposts everything he says. When people publish something he doesn't like, he almost always lashes out and gets plenty of press coverage for it. Or he tweets about it. He's got plenty of "recourse" in that he can respond and the court of public opinion can decide. And, yeah, it was a "bad judge" that actually followed the precedent of the Supreme Court on the First Amendment.

Ryan digs in some more at least trying to get Trump to commit to something about libel law.

RYAN: But there’s standards like malice is required. Would you weaken that? Would you require less than malice for news organizations?

TRUMP: I would make it so that when someone writes incorrectly, yeah, I think I would get a little bit away from malice without having to get too totally away. Look, I think many of the stories about me are written badly. I don’t know if it’s malice because the people don’t know me. When Charles writes about me or when Ruth writes about me, you know, we’ve never really met. And I get these stories and they’re so angry and I actually say, I actually say, “How could they write?” – and many stories I must tell you, many stories are written that with a brief phone call could be corrected before they’re written. Nobody calls me.

STEPHEN STROMBERG, EDITORIAL WRITER: How are you defining “incorrect?” It seems like you’re defining it as fairness or your view of fairness rather than accuracy.

TRUMP: Fairness, fairness is, you know, part of the word. But you know, I’ve had stories that are written that are absolutely incorrect. I’ll tell you now and the word “intent”, as you know, is an important word, as you know, in libel. I’ll give you an example....

So, yeah, he'd basically try to do away with Supreme Court precedent in NYT v. Sullivan on the "actual malice" standard. That's not something you get to do as President (separation of powers and all that), so that's interesting. And, also, Stromberg points out what everyone is thinking, which is that Trump seems unable to distinguish between factually incorrect and an opinion of me I don't like.

Oh, and then as for his "I'll give you an example" that I end on, he then goes on at fairly great length to not actually give any example. Rather he just starts talking about protesters at his events, and the questions then turn to violence by his supporters and whether he condones it or not. And this goes on for a while -- probably a good 10 minutes or so -- before suddenly Trump brings it all back around to defamation.

TRUMP: .... You can have 20,000 people and you can have like two people. Usually – it’s amazing – usually it’s one person. I mean, it’s like they stage it. It’s very professional. They have like one person here, one person here, one person.

Okay, we’re talking about the media. So, I’ve never seen the media cover it from that angle. It’s always, “Trump had a” — and here’s the big thing, I mean, honestly, essentially nobody has heard

So basically ten minutes of him talking about protesters and his campaign events and he concludes by basically saying he doesn't like "the angle" from which the press covers the situations at his events, and somehow that's an example of "incorrect" coverage that he'd like to open up the laws about. In other words, if the press is not fawning propaganda, it's defamatory. There are countries where the press is run that way, and we usually call them banana republics.

And now that he's brought it back around to defamation after a long tangent, Fred Hiatt, the Editorial Page Editor, finally points out the ruling in NYT v. Sullivan (though he flips the names) and Trump's answer is... well, it's an answer.

HIATT: But just – given the Supreme Court rulings on libel — Sullivan v. New York Times — how would you change the law?

TRUMP: I would just loosen them up.

RUTH MARCUS: What does that mean?

[Crosstalk]

TRUMP: I’d have to get my lawyers in to tell you, but I would loosen them up. I would loosen them up. If The Washington Post writes badly about me – and they do, they don’t write good – I mean, I don’t think I get – I read some of the stories coming up here, and I said to my staff, I said, “Why are we even wasting our time? The hatred is so enormous.” I don’t know why. I mean, I do a good job. I have thousands of employees. I work hard.

I’m not looking for bad for our country. I’m a very rational person, I’m a very sane person. I’m not looking for bad. But I read articles by you, and others. And, you know, we’ve never – we don’t know each other, and the level of hatred is so incredible, I actually said, “Why am I – why am I doing this? Why am I even here?” And I don’t expect anything to happen–

So again, it sounds like he considers that anything less than praise needs to be included in his newly "opened up" libel laws, despite the fact that the First Amendment would bar any such opening (and it would be unlikely that Congress would pass such a law in the first place). You'd think that someone running for President might at least consider the details of how the three branches of government work, but I guess that's too much to ask.

RYAN: Would that be the standard then? If there is an article that you feel has hatred, or is bad, would that be the basis for libel?

TRUMP: No, if it’s wrong. If it’s wrong.

RYAN: Wrong whether there’s malice or not?

TRUMP: I mean, The Washington Post never calls me. I never had a call, “Why – why did you do this?” or “Why did you do that?” It’s just, you know, like I’m this horrible human being. And I’m not. You know, the one thing we have in common I think we all love the country. Now, maybe we come at it from different sides, but nobody ever calls me. I mean, Bob Costa calls about a political story – he called because we’re meeting senators in a little while and congressmen, supporters – but nobody ever calls.

So now the standard is whether or not someone called? That's a new one. I mean, over in Europe, Max Mosley (who seems like the kind of guy Trump would get along with) once demanded that the press should be required to contact famous people before they write about them, but even in Europe, where press freedom isn't nearly as strong as in the US, such a proposal was rejected.

RYAN: The reason I keep asking this is because you’ve said three times you’ve said we are going to open up the libel laws and when you ask you what you mean you say hatred, or bad–

TRUMP: I want to make it more fair from the side where I am, because things are said that are libelous, things are said about me that are so egregious and so wrong, and right now according to the libel laws I can do almost nothing about it because I’m a well-known person you know, etc., etc.

But that's not what libel law says. What Trump is confusing is that the law says that as a public figure, which he undoubtedly is, the standard for defamation is false statements made with "malicious intent." It's not that he can't do anything about things that are "so egregious and so wrong," because he can. If they're clearly wrong, then it shouldn't be difficult to prove that and show that it was published with malicious intent. Instead, he seems to think that everything said that he doesn't like, or where the "angle" isn't flattering or where no one called him to get his version of things first is "defamation" and needs to be stopped. That's not how the First Amendment works. At all.

That was it that was directly about defamation law... but I did find it interesting that just a little while later, the conversation turned to Trump's comments on the Ricketts family, owners of the Chicago Cubs, who had spoken out against Trump and had put money into an organization that ran anti-Trump ads. In a similar manner to Trump telling the Washington Post it was "going to have problems" if he became President, Trump lashed out at the Ricketts family, saying: "They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!"

I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $'s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2016

The Washington Post Editorial Board asked Trump about this and he gave quite an interesting answer:

HIATT: I’d like to come back to the campaign. You said a few weeks ago after a family in Chicago gave some money to a PAC opposing you, you said, “They better watch out. They have a lot to hide.” What should they watch out for?

TRUMP: Look, they are spending vicious … I don’t even know these people. Those Ricketts. I actually said they ought to focus on the Chicago Cubs and, you know, stop playing around. They spent millions of dollars fighting me in Florida. And out of 68 counties, I won 66. I won by 20 points, almost 20 points. Against, everybody thought he was a popular sitting senator. I had $38 million dollars spent on me in Florida over a short period of time. $38 million. And, you know, the Ricketts, I don’t even know these people.

HIATT: So, what does it mean, “They better watch out”?

TRUMP: Well, it means that I’ll start spending on them. I’ll start taking ads telling them all what a rotten job they’re doing with the Chicago Cubs. I mean, they are spending on me. I mean, so am I allowed to say that? I’ll start doing ads about their baseball team. That it’s not properly run or that they haven’t done a good job in the brokerage business lately.

Remember, this is the same guy, just minutes earlier, who was talking about the need to "open up libel laws" for people saying things about him that he thought was mean, and that he felt was unfair because they didn't present his side of the story. And he has such little self-awareness that he's then publicly advocating for a smear job against the Ricketts family, based on nothing more than his desire to attack them.

Ryan follows this up by asking if he planned to do this as President, and Trump basically says that, no, he'd let his revenge plan simmer until he was out of office. Because that's healthy.

RYAN: Would you do that while you are president?

TRUMP: No, not while I am president. No, not while I’m president. That is two phases. Right now, look, you know, I went to a great school, I was a good student and all. I am an intelligent person. My uncle, I would say my uncle was one of the brilliant people. He was at MIT for 35 years. As a great scientist and engineer, actually more than anything else. Dr. John Trump, a great guy. I’m an intelligent person. I understand what is going on. Right now, I had 17 people who started out. They are almost all gone. If I were going to do that in a different fashion I think I probably wouldn’t be sitting here. You would be interviewing somebody else. But it is hard to act presidential when you are being … I mean, actually I think it is presidential because it is winning. And winning is a pretty good thing for this country because we don’t win any more. And I say it all the time. We do not win any more. This country doesn’t win. We don’t win with trade. We don’t win with … We can’t even beat ISIS. And by the way, just to answer the rest of that question, I would knock the hell out of ISIS in some form. I would rather not do it with our troops, you understand that. Very important. Because I think saying that is very important because I was against the war in Iraq, although they found a clip talking to Howard Stern, I said, “Well…” It was very unenthusiastic. Before they want in, I was totally against the war. I was against it for years. I actually had a delegation sent from the White House to talk to me because I guess I get a disproportionate amount of publicity. I was just against the war. I thought it would destabilize the Middle East, and it did. But we have to knock out ISIS. We are living like in medieval times. Who ever heard of the heads chopped off?

Got it? Don't say mean things about Trump because that's libel and needs to be stopped, but also don't publicly disagree with him either, because then it's fair game to make up stuff about you... and that might not be Presidential, but that's okay because he's got a smart uncle and because winning is Presidential and it's about winning and ISIS chops people's heads off and ohmygod how much longer is this interview and when can we get out of here please?

Seriously, America, what the hell is going on with the electorate right now? I realize all the candidates are basically terrible, but really?

Filed Under: anti-slapp, defamation, donald trump, first amendment, free speech, hulk hogan, libel, ricketts family, slapp
Companies: gawker