Trump's case against Wall Street Journal faces hurdles

 Donald Trump's legal case against the Wall Street Journal over a story about the U.S. president and Jeffrey Epstein could face hurdles, one of which is that it does not appear to comply with Florida state rules over the timing of defamation lawsuits, legal experts told Reuters.

If the case proceeds, Trump would need to clear a demanding "actual malice" standard that must be met by public figures to win in U.S. defamation cases. The standard means Trump must prove the paper knew the article was false or acted with reckless disregard for its truth.

The Wall Street Journal lawsuit is the latest in a series of cases Trump has filed against news outlets, and experts said his demonstrated willingness to sue could have a chilling effect on coverage of his administration even if the suit was ultimately unsuccessful.

Trump sued the Journal and its owners including Rupert Murdoch in Miami federal court on Friday, seeking at least $10 billion on each of two defamation counts. He said the newspaper defamed him in a July 17 report that said Trump's name was on a 2003 birthday greeting for Epstein that included a sexually suggestive drawing and a reference to secrets they shared.

A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the Journal's parent, said on Friday the company was confident in the accuracy of its reporting and would vigorously defend itself against the lawsuit.

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty and the case was dismissed after his death.

Backers of conspiracy theories about Epstein have urged Trump to release investigative files related to the disgraced financier and sex offender.

Two lawyers with experience in defamation law said Trump did not appear to have complied with a Florida law requiring anyone bringing a defamation case against "a newspaper, periodical, or other medium" to notify the defendant at least five days before filing suit.

That means the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles, would have no option but to dismiss the case if the Journal asked him to do so, though Trump may be able to re-file it, the experts said.

The Journal published its story on Thursday. In his lawsuit on Friday, Trump's lawyers said the Journal informed Trump about the forthcoming article last Tuesday, and they sent the paper an email that same day asserting that the article would be false and defamatory.

That timeline does not appear to comply with Florida's five-day notice law, said Marc Randazza, who said he had been practicing defamation law in Florida for more than 20 years.

"I don't even need to look at the merits of the case. The game is over," said Randazza of law firm Randazza Legal Group in Las Vegas. Randazza said Trump's case was "at least colorable" on the merits.

The White House deferred comment to Trump's lawyer in the case, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Dow Jones declined to comment.

TRUMP MUST CLEAR HIGH BAR

In addition to the five-day notice hurdle, Trump would likely struggle to prove that the Journal acted with "actual malice," said Andrew Fleischman of law firm Sessions & Fleischman in Atlanta.

To back Trump's claim that the Journal knew the story was inaccurate, his complaint says the president informed the Journal before publication that the reporting was false.

Fleischman said a disagreement about the truth of an assertion is not enough to prove actual malice. Instead, Trump would need to demonstrate that the paper was deliberately lying.

The billions in monetary damages Trump was seeking is a "PR figure" designed to attract attention, said Fleischman, who frequently defends clients against defamation claims.

The figure would far exceed the largest defamation judgments and settlements in recent history, including a $1.3 billion judgment against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and Fox News' settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million.

Trump, a Republican who has pledged to "straighten out the press," has a mixed record in the numerous lawsuits he has filed against media outlets.

Judges have dismissed cases he brought against CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post. More recently, television network ABC and CBS parent company Paramount (PARA.O), opens new tab have opted to settle cases brought by Trump.

Walt Disney (DIS.N), opens new tab-owned ABC News in December paid $15 million and publicly apologized for comments by anchor George Stephanopoulos, who inaccurately said Trump had been found liable for rape. Trump had been found liable of sexually abusing, but not raping, the magazine writer E. Jean Carroll.

Paramount's $16 million settlement came as the company seeks approval from U.S. regulators for its merger with Skydance Media. Trump had initially sought $10 billion in his lawsuit, which alleged CBS deceptively edited an interview with Democratic former Vice President Kamala Harris to favor her rival presidential bid.

Even if the Journal prevails, Trump's willingness to file claims against news organizations could have a chilling effect on journalists given the costs of defending against them, experts said.

BONGINO CASE DISMISSED

Trump would not be the first member of his administration to run up against Florida's five-day notice provision.

In 2019, podcaster Dan Bongino - who is now the deputy director of the FBI - sued online news outlet the Daily Beast for defamation over a story about his departure from the National Rifle Association's online video channel.

The case was dismissed the next year. U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez in Miami sided with the Daily Beast in finding that Bongino did not comply with the provision, but said the basis of his decision was that Bongino's case lacked merit.

Neither the FBI nor Bongino's personal lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment.

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ABC News capitulates to Donald Trump

ABC News is set to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Donald J. Trump, reported The New York Times.

The agreement was a significant concession by a major news organization and a rare victory for a media-bashing politician whose previous litigation efforts against news outlets have often ended in defeat.

Under the terms of a settlement revealed on Saturday, ABC News will donate the $15 million to Mr. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum. The network and its star anchor, George Stephanopoulos, also published a statement saying they “regret” remarks made about Mr. Trump during a televised interview in March.

ABC News, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, will pay Mr. Trump an additional $1 million for his legal fees.

The outcome is an unusual win for Mr. Trump, who has frequently sued news organizations for defamation and frequently lost, including in litigation against CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Several experts in media law said they believed that ABC News could have continued to fight, given the high threshold required by the courts for a public figure like Mr. Trump to prove defamation. A plaintiff must not only show that a news outlet published false information, but that it did so knowing that the information was false or with substantial doubts about its accuracy.

“Major news organizations have often been very leery of settlements in defamation suits brought by public officials and public figures, both because they fear the dangerous pattern of doing so and because they have the full weight of the First Amendment on their side,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the University of Utah.

“What we might be seeing here is an attitudinal shift,” she added. “Compared to the mainstream American press of a decade ago, today’s press is far less financially robust, far more politically threatened, and exponentially less confident that a given jury will value press freedom, rather than embrace a vilification of it.”

ABC News did not elaborate on Saturday about its precise reasons for settling. “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” a network spokeswoman said. A lawyer for Mr. Trump declined to comment on the agreement.

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Truth be told: Alex Jones must pay $49.3 million for lies

A Texas jury has determined Infowars host Alex Jones must pay the parents of a Sandy Hook school shooting victim $45.2 million in punitive damages, reported the Washington Post. The Friday decision comes a day after the same jury awarded the plaintiffs $4.1 million in compensatory damages, culminating the final phase of a defamation case first brought in 2018 over Jones’s repeated false claims that the deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history was a hoax.

Jones was not in court as the jury read the unanimous verdict.

The damages phase of the trial that ended Friday marks the first time Jones, an influential purveyor of far-right conspiracy theories, has faced financial repercussions in court for the outlandish lies he told via his Infowars broadcast about the shooting. Since the early days that followed the 2012 shooting that killed 26 people, including 20 young children, Jones said on his program that “no one died” at Sandy Hook and that the attack was a ruse “staged” by gun-control advocates to manufacture anti-gun sentiment.

In the case brought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, the damages hint at what Jones could face in the months ahead in his additional Sandy Hook defamation cases in Texas and Connecticut.

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Alex Jones liable for $4 million 'a victory for the truth'

“Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for.' 
                            Plaintiffs' Attorney Mark Bankston  

A Texas jury awarded the parents of a child killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School more than $4 million in compensatory damages from the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the first time he has been held financially liable for defaming the victims’ parents by spreading lies that they were complicit in a government plot to stage the shooting as a pretext for gun control, reported The New York Times.

The decision was the first in a series of potential awards against Mr. Jones. On Friday the jury will consider evidence of Mr. Jones’s net worth to determine how much, if anything, to award the parents, Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, in punitive damages.

Two other trials by Sandy Hook parents seeking damages from Mr. Jones have been scheduled for next month, though they may be delayed because his company filed for bankruptcy last week.

Mr. Jones has become increasingly emblematic of how misinformation and false narratives have gained traction in American society. He has played a role in spreading some of recent history’s most pernicious conspiracy theories, such as Pizzagate — in which an Infowars video helped inspire a gunman to attack a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. — as well as coronavirus myths and “Stop the Steal” falsehoods about election fraud before the Capitol assault on Jan. 6, 2021.

The verdict came after several days of emotional testimony, including 90 minutes on Tuesday when Ms. Lewis personally addressed Mr. Jones, asking him why he knowingly spread lies about the death of her child, Jesse, 6, who died along with 19 other first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

“Jesse was a real boy. And I am a real mom,” Ms. Lewis told Mr. Jones. Later she admonished him: “Alex, I want you to hear this. We’re more polarized than ever as a country. Some of that is because of you.”

But the most explosive revelation came Wednesday, when the family’s lawyer, Mark Bankston, revealed that Mr. Jones’s legal team had mistakenly sent him the entire contents of Mr. Jones’s cellphone, including at least two years’ worth of incriminating text messages now of interest to the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. The committee is scrutinizing Mr. Jones’s role in planning events surrounding the insurrection, and Mr. Bankston is now seeking the judge’s approval to deliver the text records to prosecutors and the Jan. 6 committee.

Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin had requested $150 million in damages, and Mr. Bankston said he was optimistic about what the jury would award on Friday. “You can probably imagine that if a jury returns a verdict exceeding $4 million for these plaintiffs in compensatory damages, I think punishment is probably going to be in that range or higher,” Mr. Bankston said. “I think it’s perfectly expected that we’re going to see an over nine-figure judgment against Mr. Jones.” 

He added: “It’s been a long journey, and it’s really, really nice to able to turn and look at my clients, and say ‘he can’t get off scot-free for this. He can’t. You had a defendant who went into that courtroom and said, ‘I think I should have to pay them a dollar.’ And this jury said no.”

Mr. Jones said in his bankruptcy filing that he had paid $15 million so far in legal costs for the Sandy Hook litigation. Citing the damages that Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin had requested, Mr. Jones called the award a “major victory” in a video posted on Infowars on Thursday night, even as he urged viewers to buy products from his website to stave off what he portrayed as financial ruin.

“I admitted I was wrong,” he said. “I admitted it was a mistake. I admitted that I followed disinformation but not on purpose. I apologized to the families. And the jury understood that.”

Mr. Jones lost a series of Sandy Hook defamation suits by default last year after repeatedly failing to provide court-ordered documents and testimony. Those rulings set the stage for the trial this summer.

More important than money, the Sandy Hook families have said, is society’s verdict on a culture in which viral misinformation damages lives and destroys reputations.

“Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for,” Mr. Bankston told the jury last week. “This is a case about creating change.”

At the heart of the trial was a June 2017 episode of NBC’s “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly” that profiled Mr. Jones. In the broadcast, Mr. Heslin protested Mr. Jones’s denial of the shooting. He recalled his last moments with Jesse, saying, “I held my son with a bullet hole through his head.” 

Afterward, Mr. Jones and Owen Shroyer, an Infowars host, aired shows implying that Mr. Heslin had lied.

“Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly?” Mr. Shroyer said on Infowars. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

During the trial, Mr. Jones’s lawyer, F. Andino Reynal, said that Mr. Jones was essentially running his own defense. After much uncertainty about whether the conspiracy broadcaster would testify, he was adamant that he would appear as the sole witness in his defense.

Mr. Heslin and Ms. Lewis deployed a variety of experts. The trial opened with testimony from Dan Jewiss, a retired Connecticut State Police investigator who led the Sandy Hook case; a forensic psychiatrist and the psychologist who treated Mr. Heslin and Ms. Lewis; and several Infowars employees, whose dubious statements allowed the family’s lawyers to submit evidence that was damaging to Mr. Jones, including a televised version of the full interview with Ms. Kelly, in which Mr. Jones advanced incendiary false claims.

Mr. Jones’s audience and corresponding revenues have risen sharply, to more than $50 million annually, in the decade since Sandy Hook.

His defense of the Second Amendment after the mass shooting brought attention from mainstream news organizations. But it was Mr. Jones’s alliance with former President Donald J. Trump, who appeared on Infowars in December 2015, that moved him from the far-right fringes to the center of Republican Party populism.

Mr. Jones and Mr. Trump have often echoed the same incendiary false claims, including the racist “birther” lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States; that Muslims in the New York area “celebrated” the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and the 2020 election falsehoods that brought violence to the Capitol last year.

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