Locking up political critics? Donald Trump is open to him. But his usual tactic going into his second term is suing the media to appeal.
We're not just talking about a run-of-the-mill libel lawsuit.
We're talking about Trump now suing an Iowa newspaper for a bad poll. And suing the franchisee for consumer fraud. He claims 60 minutes for how he edited a video – a video he wasn't even a part of. He wants $10 billion. He also claims Pulitzer Prizes for rewarding newspapers that covered his collusion with Russia.
This after he sued ABC News for allegedly finding him liable for rape; in fact, he was found responsible for sexual abusebut or forced.
Several media analysts this week expressed that the parent company of ABC resolve the enforcement appeal case without testing. The Disney conglomerate paid out $15 million.
One global expert on free speech called this a a well-worn playbook used in independent countries: To sue, sue and keep suing, regardless of whether there is merit in a lawsuit.
Winning the suit is almost beside the point, said Eric Heinze. The most important thing is to scare off potential critics, as that could ruin legal fees.
“That's how autocrats work,” said Heinze, professor of law at the University of London, head of the Center for Law, Democracy and Society, and author of a book about international lessons learned from free speech.
“Not by telling you how they are going to harass you, but by keeping you uncertain how or whether they will do it, or when they will do it. That is the secret of the autocrat. No it is clarity, it is obscurity.”
The point of chilling the media, he said, is to make it financially risky for people to say things they know are perfectly legal.
The practice has an acronym: SLAPP
The practice is so widespread that it has an acronym: SLAPP, short for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. And it's used in all kinds of places, including in democracies with rich protesters.
Cherian George is from a country famous for the practice of: Singapore. He said that defamation issues are part of the ruling party's stock response to public debate.
In one famous case, a now-defunct magazine published an interview with an opposition leader who accused the Singapore government of abusing defamation lawsuits to cover up corruption. How did the government respond? By being claims the magazine for destruction.
A former journalist, George is now an academic who studies free speech and teaches at Hong Kong Baptist University.
He tells his students – who are mostly from mainland China – that a big difference with the US, because of how the First Amendment has been interpreted by the courts, is that it is so difficult for politicians to win a defamation case that they rarely even try.
“I'll have to update that speech,” George said.
He says much will depend on the willingness of media owners to protect the freedom of the press – the stuff of Hollywood movies, as it were The Washington Postand battle to publish a massive release of documents about the Vietnam War.
He called the ABC case a failed experiment, not the kind of moment that Disney will ever want to celebrate in one of his own films.
Profit-driven media owners are vulnerable to this political pressure, he said.
Just two days after Disney settled, there was another example of a wealthy media owner scrambling to get on Trump's good side.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, he donated $1 million to the Trump startup fund and fly to Mar-a-Lago.
In the recent election, he surprised the staff of his own newspaper canceling an editorial that endorsed Trump's opponent, Kamala Harris.
Trump said in a cryptic social media post Thursday that he suddenly likes some anonymous people, in a comprehensive message: “Everybody wants to be my friend!!!”
Disney's desire to be nice to Trump has drawn a lot of criticism.
NBC Host Chuck Todd complain that his ABC counterpart George Stephanopoulos was abandoned. The conservative anti-Trump press The Bulwark worried that the media would start self-censoring, and stop promoting Trump's harshest critics.
Trump once recognized a reason for suing the media
But some reports say the case was more complicated.
The New York Post is recommended Disney set out to avoid an awkward discovery process, including testimony that Stephanopoulos was warned several times before going on air not to use the word, “rape,” and then used the word a- again.
The New York Times said Disney's lawyers they were concerned the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court and end up being a cause for weakening First Amendment case law.
As it stands now, it is extremely difficult for a public figure in the US to successfully sue for defamation. The media is protected if it does not publish speech that is ill-informed and recklessly to the truth.
This is the legacy of a court case in which the New York Times was sued over an ad in 1960 against division. Alabama's police commissioner said there were mistakes and abuse, and he was first granted $500,000but the Supreme Court overturned it in New York Times v. Sullivan, the foundation of current US libel law.
It has been efforts to challenge it. And two of the judges of the High Court, especially Clarence Thomassupport that 1964 decision again.
In the meantime, most suits like this will be thrown out of court.
Trump is on the record explaining, to Heinze's earlier point, that winning is not everything when it comes to defamation suits.
Trump admitted this after he sued a journalist in 2006 who questioned his claim to be a billionaire; he sued, lost, and then said it was worth it.
“I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they cost a lot more,” Trump said.
“I did it to make his life miserable, which I'm happy about.”
He now aims to make life difficult for a few more people.
Former US president Donald Trump has angrily insulted and threatened to sue a columnist who accused him of rape during his October impeachment law by the writer. Video excerpts from his deposition were not released by the court on Friday.
Summary of Trump's trial
This includes suing one of the most famous voters in the US under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. The reason? A very serious study conducted by Ann Selzer, who has since retired after a distinguished career.
A few days before the election in November, she was he shocked the nation with a poll showing Kamala Harris leading in Iowa, a result that signaled a possible national landslide for her, and received a lot of media attention because of her history.
Trump ultimately won Iowa by 13 points; in his court filing, he said the poll caused his campaign to spend resources in Iowa unnecessarily, and said an error of that magnitude was not statistically possible, but an act of malicious intent. ' there.
He is seeking unspecified damages from her and is also suing the newspaper that published the investigation, the Des Moines Record.
That's after Trump CBS sued over 60 minutes edited clips of an interview with Kamala Harris. The show ran a shorter clip dealing with an uncomfortable subject for her: the Middle East. He then resisted calls to publicly release the full interview transcript. He is seeking $10 billion.
But CBS denies it Accusing Trump of malice. He says he ran one clip of Harris' response on his show, and shared different clip from that same response by another CBS show.
It is also claiming the Pulitzer Prize have given awards to newspapers for the cover of his 2016 campaign alleged Russia collusion — “the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” as Trump calls it.
The 2016 case led to criminal charges against him some from Trump senior campaign staff and the Pulitzers have he defended the awards they gave to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
In response to the voter's lawsuit, Columbia University's free-speech Knight Institute called Trump's attempt a nonstarter under the First Amendment and urged the court to quickly dismiss it, noting that: Strive for fear and silence.
But Trump voiced his full support for those suits at a press conference this week.
In fact, he said, he shouldn't even be funding these cases – the US Department of Justice should be doing it; in other words, the Department of Justice is going to start directing in a month.
“We need to straighten out the media,” Trump said.
