A federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed against CNN by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign earlier this year, and concluded that the president’s team had failed to sufficiently claim that the network maliciously released a June 13, 2019 statement .
It was about an article by Larry Noble, a website contributor, who wrote in a column that “The Trump campaign assessed the potential risks and benefits of seeking Russian aid again in 2020 and decided to put that option on the table allow”. The piece was written by Robert Mueller after details of the Russia investigation were published.
The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit against CNN in March, including a series of legal actions against the media. Trump’s attorneys have a high threshold for providing their case as they need to demonstrate that the network knew the statement was false but published it anyway or acted grossly negligently.
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In his opinion, US District Judge Michael L. Brown wrote, “Most of the allegations in the complaint of actual malice are conclusive. For example, the plaintiff asserts, in a purely conclusive manner, that the defendants “clearly had a malicious motive” and “knowingly disregarded all of them”. . . Information when publishing the defamatory article. “
Brown left the door open for the Trump campaign to file an amended complaint. And he denied CNN’s claims that Noble’s play was undeniable because it was an expression of opinion, not a fact. Although the article has been labeled his own opinion, Brown wrote, the phrase itself can be considered an assertion of fact.
“His opinion on both sides is that the statement is an assertion of fact that brings them together,” Brown wrote. “The context of the statement (both in the article and in Mr Noble’s discussion of current events) suggests to readers that the statement is a statement of fact, not an opinion.”
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