Alan Dershowitz Files SLAPP Suit Against CNN; Says Not Airing More Of What He Said Is Defamation

from the not-how-it-works-dersh dept

Famed law professor Alan Dershowitz is at it again. He's now suing CNN for defamation in a SLAPP suit, because he's upset that CNN did not provide an entire quote he made during the impeachment trial before the US Senate, claiming that because he was quoted out of context, it resulted in people believing something different than what he actually meant with a quote. Reading the lawsuit, the argument is not all that different from the defamation claim made by another Harvard Law professor, Larry Lessig, earlier this year, in which he accused the NY Times and a reporter there of defamation for taking his comments out of context. Lessig later dropped that lawsuit.

In both cases, these law professors are effectively arguing that when they make convoluted arguments, you must include all of the nuances and context, or you might face defamation claims. That's incredibly chilling to free speech, and not how defamation law works. Dershowitz's complaint is that during the trial, he made the following claim:

“The only thing that would make a quid pro quo unlawful is if the quo were somehow illegal. Now we talk about motive. There are three possible motives that a political figure could have. One, a motive in the public interest and the Israel argument would be in the public interest. The second is in his own political interest and the third, which hasn’t been mentioned, would be his own financial interest, his own pure financial interest, just putting money in the bank. I want to focus on the second one for just one moment. Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest and, mostly you are right, your election is in the public interest, and if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

Dershowitz is upset that CNN aired a segment that showed just that final sentence:

Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest and, mostly you are right, your election is in the public interest, and if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.

But here's the thing: CNN also did air the full segment. And Dershowitz admits this. He's just upset that at other times they only aired part of it, and that some commentators don't paraphrase it the way he wanted them to. Here's where he admits that CNN did, in fact, air the entire clip:

Immediately after Professor Dershowitz presented his argument, CNN employees, Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper, played the entire clip properly, so CNN knew for certain that Professor Dershowitz had prefaced his remarks with the qualifier that a quid pro quo could not include an illegal act. That portion then disappeared in subsequent programming.

It disappeared because the longer quote is long, and people were focused on the key part -- that final sentence. Many people -- including some on CNN -- mocked Dershowitz for those remarks. Because they're ludicrous. Even with the full paragraph. But the mockable part is the final sentence, and that's why it's news. And the CNN commentators who mocked it were commentators -- people paid to give their opinion on what Dershowitz said.

But, as with Lessig's lawsuit, the complaint from Dershowitz is that commentator's opinions about what was said differs from what was meant. But opinions cannot be defamatory. And if people misinterpreted what Dershowitz said, that's on Dershowitz for not explaining it clearly enough. We're in a world of trouble if people get to sue for defamation every time someone misunderstands their poorly made argument.

I can understand why it's frustrating for people to completely misunderstand your argument. It happens all the time to lots of people -- including myself. It happens quite often when people try to make carefully nuanced arguments. But misunderstanding, or even misrepresenting, a more nuanced argument is not defamation. And nothing in Dershwotiz's lawsuit changes that.

Dershowitz's lawsuit hangs its hat on the Masson v. New Yorker Supreme Court ruling from 1991. Dershowitz's complaint describes that ruling as follows:

... the Court held that a media organization can be held liable for damages when it engages in conduct that changes the meaning of what a public figure has actually said. While Masson involved the use of quotation marks to falsely attribute words to Jeffrey Masson, the law that the case created is broad, and unequivocally denies first amendment protections to a media organization that takes deliberate and malicious steps to change the meaning of what a public figure has said. That is exactly what CNN did when it knowingly omitted the portion of Professor Dershowitz’s words that preceded the clip it played time and time again.

This is... not an accurate portrayal of the Masson case or ruling. And, yes, I recognize that there's some irony in Dershowitz claiming its defamation to misrepresent himself while his lawsuit then misrepresents a key Supreme Court case that it relies on. The Masson case is a fun one to read. In involves an article (and then a book made out of the article) about an academic where it appears that the author didn't just selectively quote the academic, but made up quotes. The ruling compares the quotes in the article to the tape recordings of interviews to note just how different the quotes in the story are from what was actually said. That's... not what is happening here. It is true that one of the quotes in the Masson case involved selectively excising some of a quote, but that was done in a truly egregious way. It wasn't that they left out context, it was that they excised a middle portion, to make a later portion appear that it was referring to something much earlier, rather than what was excised.

That is... not what happened to Dershowitz. Indeed, the Masson ruling works against Dershowitz in many ways. It actually says that you have to expect the press to take your long rambling comments and tighten them up, because that's part of journalism:

Even if a journalist has tape-recorded the spoken statement of a public figure, the full and exact statement will be reported in only rare circumstances. The existence of both a speaker and a reporter; the translation between two media, speech and the printed word; the addition of punctuation; and the practical necessity to edit and make intelligible a speaker's perhaps rambling comments, all make it misleading to suggest that a quotation will be reconstructed with complete accuracy. The use or absence of punctuation may distort a speaker's meaning, for example, where that meaning turns upon a speaker's emphasis of a particular word. In other cases, if a speaker makes an obvious misstatement, for example by unconscious substitution of one name for another, a journalist might alter the speaker's words but preserve his intended meaning. And conversely, an exact quotation out of context can distort meaning, although the speaker did use each reported word.

In all events, technical distinctions between correcting grammar and syntax and some greater level of alteration do not appear workable, for we can think of no method by which courts or juries would draw the line between cleaning up and other changes, except by reference to the meaning a statement conveys to a reasonable reader. To attempt narrow distinctions of this type would be an unnecessary departure from First Amendment principles of general applicability, and, just as important, a departure from the underlying purposes of the tort of libel as understood since the latter half of the 16th century. From then until now, the tort action for defamation has existed to redress injury to the plaintiff's reputation by a statement that is defamatory and false.

In the Masson case, the Court did find that many of the changes to the text, including that one section, involved a "material" difference in meaning, and therefore could be found defamatory by a jury. But this case is very, very different than what Dershowitz is claiming about CNN. They didn't quote his whole line, but there is no requirement they quote his entire argument.

Then there's the whole damages bit. According to Dershowitz, his reputation was damaged to the tune of $300 million because some people made fun of him on CNN, and it's all their fault that they didn't understand his poorly made argument. The fucking entitlement of this guy.

The damage to Professor Dershowitz’s reputation does not have to be imagined. He was openly mocked by most of the top national talk show hosts and the comments below CNN’s videos show a general public that has concluded that Professor Dershowitz had lost his mind.

Being mocked on TV is proof of damages? Really, now? How fragile is Dersh's ego here? Multiple times in the lawsuit, Dershowitz's lawyer (yes, he found an actual Florida man lawyer to file this lawsuit) talks about how only playing part of his long silly answer would lead people to believe that Dersh had "lost his mind":

The very notion of that was preposterous and foolish on its face, and that was the point: to falsely paint Professor Dershowitz as a constitutional scholar and intellectual who had lost his mind. With that branding, Professor Dershowitz’s sound and meritorious arguments would then be drowned under a sea of repeated lies.

If only airing one sentence of your preposterous argument makes you look like you've lost your mind, perhaps the problem is in how you frame your arguments.

This is yet another SLAPP suit. Florida has an anti-SLAPP law, but it's a mixed bag in terms of how strong it is. Of course, as with many SLAPP suits, the real goal is likely to just be intimidation, rather than to actually win a vexatious nonsense lawsuit.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, alan dershowitz, anti-slapp, context, defamation, florida, free speech, slapp, slapp suit
Companies: cnn

Judge Rejects Devin Nunes' SLAPP Suit Over The Esquire Article He Really, Really Doesn't Want You To Read

from the have-you-read-it-yet? dept

A federal judge has happily dismissed one of Devin Nunes' many SLAPP suits. This isn't much of a surprise given what the judge had said back in May regarding Nunes' Iowa-based SLAPP suit (reminder: Iowa has no anti-SLAPP law) against Esquire Magazine and reporter Ryan Lizza. The lawsuit was over this article that Devin Nunes really, really doesn't want you to read: Devin Nunes’s Family Farm Is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret. Reading that will make Rep. Devin Nunes very, very sad.

Back in May, the judge made it clear that he didn't think there was much of a case here, but gave Nunes a chance to try to save the lawsuit. As you can already tell, his lawyer, Stephen Biss, has come up empty in his attempt. The court easily dismisses the case with prejudice. First, the judge goes through the various statements that Nunes/Biss claim are defamatory and says "lol, no, none of those are defamatory."

The statements at issue also do not assert provably false facts, nor do they imply the existence of undisclosed facts. The statements that plaintiff has a secret, hid or concealed his family’s move, or conspired with others to hide the move do not have “precise core meaning for which a consensus of understanding exists.” ... There is no precise meaning for how many people can know a fact for it to remain a “secret” nor is there an accepted line between “hiding” or “concealing” a fact and simply declining to publicize it. Likewise, in this context there is no precise meaning of “conspiracy.” For the same reasons, the challenged statements are not “objectively capable of proof or disproof[.]”...

The context of defendants’ statements also weighs in favor of being protected opinions. The context of the publication includes the “social context” of the publication, which includes the style of writing and the intended audience.... The Article is written in a first-person perspective and includes numerous instances of Lizza’s subjective mental impressions. This weighs against the statements being reasonably construed as statements of fact as opposed to Lizza’s characterizations or opinions.

Incredibly, the ridiculous, performative, hyperbolic language that Biss employed in the lawsuit -- calling Lizza a "left-wing political journalist, well known for his extreme bias towards Plaintiff" comes back to bite Nunes in this case:

The context also includes “public context or political arena in which the statements were made.”... Plaintiff alleges that Lizza is a “left-wing political journalist, well known for his extreme bias towards [p]laintiff.” .... At the time defendants published the Article, plaintiff was a sitting Republican congressman running for re-election.... In this public context, the Court must construe the Article in light of this nation’s “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” ... Accepting plaintiff’s allegations as true, any reasonable reader would construe the Article in light of Lizza’s well know political bias. Thus, any reasonable reader would understand defendants’ use of terms like “secret” or “conspired” as the type of hyperbole that is to be expected in the political arena rather than an insinuation of fact.... In this public context, no reasonable reader could construe Lizza’s statements as facts rather than opinions.

Nunes would have lost either way, but it's hilarious to see the ridiculous, over-the-top language his lawyer used come back directly to bite him.

Also, the judge points out that Lizza's articles support the conjecture that Nunes is so upset about all this pretty strongly:

Finally, the statements at issue cannot be construed as implying undisclosed defamatory facts because Lizza disclosed the basis for his conclusions. As to the statements that plaintiff’s family’s move was a “secret” or was “concealed,” the Article states that Lizza was unable to find any mention from plaintiff or the press in plaintiff’s district mentioning the move.... The Article also mentions a Wall Street Journal editorial which discussed plaintiff’s family’s dairy farm and featured a Tulare, California dateline.... Nothing in the context of the Article otherwise implies that defendants’ characterization is based on any other undisclosed facts.

Similarly, as to the conclusion that plaintiff and others conspired to hide the move, the Article points to two specific instances that support the statement. First, the Article notes that plaintiff appeared at a town hall with Congressman King in a town fifty miles from Sibley. The press release for the event did not mention plaintiff’s family ties to the district, and instead stated that plaintiff’s “family has operated a dairy farm in Tulare County, California for three generations.” ... Second, the Article discusses how the Dairy Star article about NuStar mentioned several members of the Nunes family, but omitted plaintiff.... Nelson told Lizza he omitted plaintiff at plaintiff’s family’s request.... These facts show the basis for defendants’ conclusion that plaintiff and others “conspired” to hide plaintiff’s family’s move, but do not imply the existence of other facts. The reader is “free to accept or reject [defendants’] opinion based on their own independent evaluation of the facts.”

As for the statement in the article about Nunes trying to discredit the Russia investigation and "protect[ing] Donald Trump at all costs, even if it means shredding his own reputation and the independence of the historically nonpartisan committee in the process" is deemed rhetorical hyperbole:

This statement is a protected opinion for two reasons. First, the statement is “rhetorical hyperbole” and is thus protected by the First Amendment. In, Adelson v. Harris, 774 F.3d 803, 807 (2d Cir. 2014), the court held that statements that plaintiff’s money was “dirty” and “tainted” was non-actionable rhetorical hyperbole protected by the First Amendment. Terms like “battering ram,” “at all costs,” and “shredding” are similar rhetorical hyperbole as well.

Second, this statement also has no “precise core of meaning for which a consensus of understanding exists” and thus is not objectively capable of proof or disproof..... There is no core meaning about what it means to use a committee as a battering ram, protect someone at all costs, or shred one’s own reputation. Even if these terms had a precise meaning, plaintiff has not explained how such statements could be proved or disproved. Plaintiff argues these statements “accuse Plaintiff of abusing his position as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, obstruction of the Russia investigation, prejudice, impartiality and unethical behavior.” .... Plaintiff fails, however, to identify any provably false facts implied by the Article that would lead to these conclusions. Also, for the same reasons discussed in the previous section, the context of defendants’ statements, particularly these statements about issues of fundamental public importance, must be construed as opinions entitled to protection in the context of political debate concerning a public official.

Another statement -- regarding Nunes' family selling their California dairy farm and moving to Iowa for a new farm -- the judge notes that Nunes made no effort to claim that this statement is false, even though it was listed as one of the defamatory statements in the lawsuit:

Plaintiff has not alleged that any aspect of this statement is false, nor does plaintiff’s brief articulate how this statement is defamatory. Plaintiff appears to admit the statements to the extent it alleges that plaintiff’s parents, brother, and sister-in-law currently live and work in Sibley, Iowa.... Regardless, nothing about this statement is defamatory. None of the facts about plaintiff’s relation to various individuals and their real estate transactions tends to harm plaintiff’s reputation. As a matter of law this statement is not defamatory.

One by one the judge rejects each and every claimed defamatory statement for reasons like these. Another one gets rejected because it's about Nunes' family, not himself. Another for being "substantially true." Basically just as we said when this suit was filed, none of this is even remotely defamatory.

Biss tried to get around the fact that none of the actual statements are defamatory by arguing that the article as a whole implied defamatory things and... that's not how any of this works. And the judge knows that.

Plaintiff fails to state a claim for defamation by implication for two reasons. First, no reasonable person could draw plaintiff’s asserted implication from the Article. Second, even if a reasonable person could draw the implication, there is no indication that defendants intended or endorsed the implication.

He also suggests there are "defamatory inferences," and again, the judge points out that the article does not support this claim:

Reading the entire Article in context, no reasonable reader could reach plaintiff’s alleged implication because the Article negates those implications. The Article states that plaintiff “has no financial interest” in NuStar. ... The Article also makes clear plaintiff is not involved in managing NuStar. ... (noting that the Dairy Star article stated that NuStar was managed by Anthony Jr. “with his son and wife” and noting in the next paragraph plaintiff is not mentioned anywhere in the Dairy Star article). No reasonable reader could understand the Article to imply the exact opposite of its text, i.e. that plaintiff had some financial or managerial interest in NuStar.

Likewise, no reasonable reader could read the Article to imply plaintiff conspired with others to hide NuStar’s use of undocumented labor. The Article is clear the conspiracy was “to hide the fact that [plaintiff]’s family sold its farm and moved to Iowa[.]” .... Similarly, no reasonable reader could find the “politically explosive secret” referenced in the title of the Article is NuStar’s use of undocumented labor. The Article states “[s]o here’s the secret: The Nunes family dairy of political lore—the one where his brother and parents work—isn’t in California. It’s in Iowa.” ... Given these express statements, no reasonable reader could infer that plaintiff was involved in a conspiracy to hide NuStar’s use of undocumented labor.

Then after all of that, the court also notes that Nunes failed to show actual malice, which, of course, is necessary in defamation cases involving public figures. And, as a reminder, "actual malice" does not mean "he didn't like the guy." It has a very specific meaning: that the statements were made knowing they were false or with reckless disregard for whether it was false or not. And, as the judge notes, there was no evidence to support this at all.

The cases plaintiff cites in support of his argument highlight the factual insufficiency of his complaint. For example, plaintiff asserts defendants acted with actual malice because they failed to observe journalistic standards, conceived of a storyline in advance and sought to find evidence to confirm that story, and relied on unreliable or biased sources in researching the Article.... These allegations, however, are “naked assertion[s]” devoid of “further factual enhancement,” and “labels and conclusions,” that fail to plausibly assert actual malice....

[....]

The Court will not reiterate every factual deficiency in the amended complaint, but some examples are illustrative. Plaintiff alleges defendants “relied on sources, including anonymous and unnamed persons, they knew were wholly unreliable and had an axe to grind against Plaintiff and his family.”... Plaintiff does not identify the sources, what axe the sources had to grind with plaintiff, or any factual basis from which the Court could plausibly find that defendants’ sources were unreliable or that defendants knew or should have known they were unreliable. To the contrary, the Article itself refers to two unnamed, but not anonymous, sources who had firsthand knowledge of NuStar’s use of undocumented labor.... This is fundamentally different than the cases upon which plaintiff relies. See Duffy v. Leading Edge Prods., Inc., 44 F.3d 308, 315 n.10 (5th Cir. 1995) (noting that evidence of an ulterior motive can “bolster an inference of actual malice,” and citing specific facts about the relationship between the parties from which the jury could have found that defendant made defamatory statements with actual malice); AdvanFort Co. v. Mar. Exec., LLC, No. 1:15-cv-220, 2015 WL 4603090, at *8 (E.D. Va. July 28, 2015) (finding that plaintiff could plausibly allege actual malice if plaintiff specifically asserted that defendant knew the author’s relationship with plaintiffs had “gone sour” after their past “unsuccessful business relationship”); Barreca, 683 N.W.2d at 123 (reversing summary judgment when record established defendant made defamatory statement based on one anonymous and unverified phone call, and portions of the statement at issue arguably showed defendant “entertained serious doubts about the truth of the phone call”).

Similarly, plaintiff alleges defendants acted with actual malice because they republished the Article.... The amended complaint asserts defendants republished the Article by tweeting links to it.... This argument fails both factually and as a matter of law. Publishing a link to an existing story is not a republication of the story.... Even if tweeting links to the Article constitutes republication, the cases plaintiff cites are inapposite here.

For what it's worth, the judge also makes a brief mention of the language that Biss used in the lawsuit to smear Lizza, regarding some rumors that went around about him. We had pointed out earlier that these claims seemed much more "defamatory" than anything Lizza wrote about Nunes. Lizza's lawyers had asked the court to strike those statements from the motion, which the court denies as moot (since the whole case is being tossed) but does note:

The Court notes, however, the material identified by defendants ... is immaterial, impertinent, and scandalous. Plaintiff’s personal attacks on Lizza have no bearing on this case. This is apparent because plaintiff never refers to the challenged allegations in resisting defendants’ motion to dismiss. The allegations likewise are prejudicial to Lizza and have criminal overtones.

The one annoying part of the ruling has to do with anti-SLAPP laws. Even though, as noted, Iowa has no anti-SLAPP law, Lizza and Hearst sought to say that California's strong anti-SLAPP law should apply (seeing as any reputational damage to Nunes would occur in California). The court rejects that on procedural grounds, saying that standard 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss procedures (and other rules of federal civil procedure) "pre-empt" California's anti-SLAPP law, since they grant the same basic protections in getting cases tossed out early. That's an argument that comes up frequently in anti-SLAPP cases. And while it's true that a motion to dismiss can -- at times -- serve a similar purpose to an anti-SLAPP motion to strike, there are important procedural differences that protect free speech, including the attorney's fees award that goes along with most anti-SLAPP laws, including California's. Unfortunately, here, the court says that cannot apply.

This is yet another reason why we absolutely need a federal anti-SLAPP law with fee shifting as part of it. Still, overall, this is a good, clean ruling rejecting one of Nunes' silly SLAPP suits. This result was inevitable, but still created a nuisance -- which likely was the intent all along.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-slapp, california, defamation, devin nunes, esquire, free speech, iowa, opinion, ryan lizza, slapp, slapp suit, steven biss

Trump Campaign Files Laughably Stupid SLAPP Suit Over A NY Times Opinion Piece

from the not-how-any-of-this-works dept

Welp, Donald Trump promised to "open up libel laws" back when he was first running for President, and his campaign has now decided to test out some moronic theory of defamation in suing the NY Times over an opinion piece. Just to be clear upfront: the lawsuit is bad. It will not succeed and appears to have no intent to succeed. Instead, it appears to be almost entirely performative -- including the kind of text you'd normally see on a political website, rather than in a lawsuit filed by a serious lawyer. But, hey, this one is filed by Charles Harder, who has a bit of a history of filing such lawsuits (including against me!).

Everything about this lawsuit is silly. First, it's suing over an opinion piece published by the NY Times in March of 2019 by Max Frankel. Just the fact that it's an opinion piece (opinions are not defamatory) should give you a sense of where this is going. The article itself, entitled "The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo" makes a pretty banal observation: that whether or not there was any direct "collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, it doesn't matter if both sides expected certain outcomes (i.e., if Trump's campaign expected the Russians to help get him elected, and if the Russian's expected that Trump would favor pro-Russia policies -- then there would be no need for actual direct communication between the two). Whether or not you think that's an accurate summation of what happened, it's certainly an understandable opinion for one to hold.

But, Trump and Harder try to argue that this opinion is not true. But everything about the argument made in the lawsuit is silly.

The Defamatory Article does not allege or refer to any proof of its claims of a “quid pro quo” or “deal” between the Campaign and Russia. Rather, the Defamatory Article selectively refers to previously-reported contacts between a Russian lawyer and persons connected with the Campaign. The Defamatory Article, however, insinuates that these contacts must have resulted in a quid pro quo or a deal, and the Defamatory Article does not acknowledge that, in fact, there had been extensive reporting, including in The Times, that the meetings and contacts that the Defamatory Article refers to did not result in any quid pro quo or deal between the Campaign and Russia, or anyone connected with either of them.

But, if you read the actual Times piece (which is quite short), it doesn't allege any actual deal. Indeed, it says right up front that there didn't need to be a deal. Literally the 1st paragraph of Frankel's piece lays out the lack of any need for an explicit quid pro quo, highlighting that merely having everyone know what to expect is more than enough.

Collusion — or a lack of it — turns out to have been the rhetorical trap that ensnared President Trump’s pursuers. There was no need for detailed electoral collusion between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy because they had an overarching deal: the quid of help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton for the quo of a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions. The Trumpites knew about the quid and held out the prospect of the quo.

That's not insinuating a deal. It's doing the opposite -- saying that a deal wasn't needed.

But the lawsuit assumes an entirely different interpretation. Even worse, its "proof" that the NY Times must know this reporting is false is the Mueller report that came out three weeks after the article was published. How was the NY Times supposed to know the details of a classified report nearly a month early in an opinion piece? That is left as a mystery for the ages. The Times piece was published on March 27th. As the filing admits, the Mueller report wasn't released until April 18th.

The Times’ story is false. The falsity of the story has been confirmed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election released on or about April 18, 2019 (the “Mueller Report”), and many other published sources, that there was no conspiracy between the Campaign and Russia in connection with the 2016 United States Presidential Election, or otherwise. Among other things, there was no “deal,” and no “quid pro quo,” between the Campaign or anyone affiliated with it, and Vladimir Putin or the Russian government.

Indeed, Harder tries to argue that the reason the NY Times put this piece out prior to the Mueller report was that it somehow knew the Mueller report would prove the article wrong. Which, of course, it did not. The whole case seems to be based on Harder and/or the Trump campaign misreading the Frankel article.

There's also a lot of garbage in the filing that no serious lawyer would put into a filing, unless it was to appeal to a political base, rather than a judge.

It is not entirely surprising that The Times would publish such a blatant false attack against the Campaign. There is extensive evidence that The Times is extremely biased against the Campaign, and against Republicans in general. This evidence includes, among other things, the fact that The Times has endorsed the Democrat in every United States presidential election of the past sixty (60) years. Also, Max Frankel, the author of the Defamatory Article, described himself in an interview as “a Democrat with a vengeance.”

The case has been filed in NY state court, and as Harder well knows, New York has a very limited anti-SLAPP law, meaning that it is unlikely to apply.

Of course, I find it depressingly amusing that this comes the same month that Harder was in court in California on behalf of Donald Trump supporting broad anti-SLAPP laws in a case in which Harder argued that "a defamation standard that turns typical political rhetoric into actionable defamation would chill expression that is central to the First Amendment and political speech."

The lawsuit is garbage and hopefully the NY Times gets it quickly tossed out, but I guess this means that Harder and Trump's support for anti-SLAPP laws that protect against these kinds of frivolous lawsuits won't extend to New York or to a (necessary) federal anti-SLAPP law.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, charles harder, defamation, donald trump, max frankel, new york, opinion, quid pro quo, russia, slapp suit
Companies: ny times

Huawei Files SLAPP Suits In France Against Critics Who Highlighted The Company's Ties To The Chinese Government

from the oh-come-on dept

We've spent many years pointing out that the freak out over Huawei equipment possibly being compromised by the Chinese government still remains without evidence to back it up. This does not mean that it's not there. But we've just noted that many (especially in the US) keep stating it as if it's factual, despite a Congressional investigation that turned up nothing (not to mention competitor Cisco fanning the flames of the attacks on Huawei, and the fact that the NSA is already known to compromise telco equipment for the US government). The usual response to pointing this out is to highlight that most large and successful Chinese companies have close relationships with the Chinese government (because they need to) and that Huawei's founder, Ren Zhengfei, was an engineer in the Chinese military. This is enough for many people to assume that the company would actively sabotage its own equipment to help the Chinese government.

As we've noted, there still is no actual evidence to prove this, though it's understandable why some might be cautious or concerned about it. Huawei insists that it has not backdoored its own equipment. No matter what you think about trusting Huawei equipment, hopefully everyone can agree that the company's decision to sue critics in France for pointing out the company's close relationship with the Chinese government, is an obnoxious SLAPP effort that should never have happened.

In an unprecedented move, the technology giant filed three defamation claims in Paris over comments made during television programs by a French researcher, a broadcast journalist and a telecommunications sector expert.

The company’s legal actions in France were published on Tuesday in a report by La Lettre A, an online investigative newsletter. Huawei confirmed the claims, which it said were filed with French law enforcement authorities in March.

The company is trying to defend these intimidation tactics by claiming that it only sued those critics who went too far and alleged that the company is actually controlled by the Chinese government:

Huawei said in a statement its claims “concern only statements that Huawei is a company controlled by the Chinese State and the Chinese Communist Party, led by a former member of the ‘counter-intelligence’ and using its technological expertise in telecom networks to commit acts of espionage against the Western world.” The company added that “these statements are false.”

If anything, this move seems likely to backfire, as it only calls much more attention to the accusations in the first place. It's fine for the company to rebut the claims, and to make efforts to demonstrate the security of its equipment. But filing defamation lawsuits against individuals over statements they made seems like an obvious intimidation tactic, rather than a legitimate way to engage on the controversial issues around how close the company is to the Chinese government and what that means for its equipment.

So far, it's not entirely clear exactly what statements Huawei is suing over, but the Bloomberg article quotes one example, which should not, in any way, rise to the level of defamation:

Valerie Niquet, a researcher at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research that specializes in China and Japan, is a regular guest on French radio and television. Huawei filed the lawsuit after her comments in two television programs in February in which she said the company had ties to the state.

Niquet was informed of the claims in September and then in November when the police reached out to her to confirm her comments, according to copies of the authorities’ emails seen by Bloomberg.

Niquet said she confirmed her comments on TF1 television on Feb. 3, and similar remarks on France 5 television on Feb. 7. In those she alluded to the alleged control the Chinese state has over Huawei, also saying that “no one would have given a Soviet company the means to monitor all the communication in the Western world, and this is what we’re doing with Huawei.”

Even if you disagree with Niquet, it seems beyond ridiculous to then sue over such statements. Of course, now we'll have to wait and see how much France believes in sticking up for free speech on statements of opinion like those made by Niquet about Huawei.

Filed Under: china, chinese government, criticism, critics, defamation, france, free speech, slapp, slapp suit
Companies: huawei