Free Republic

Rudy Giuliani is an exaggerated cartoon metaphor for millennials’ slow awaking about the fallibility and tragic decline of their parents. He graduated from law school in 1968, went on to serve as a federal prosecutor, and eventually became mayor of New York. When 9/11 happened, we were all scared and confused, and Rudy stood up there and gave us some confidence in the future. He looked like a leader. And then, as his star faded, there came a decade of irrelevance. His former prowess battered, but his pride intact, he reached for the spotlight with one final, self-destructive act: enthralling...

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Twitter to reveal who was behind the account that allegedly spread the conspiracy about the death of slain Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland, Calif., ordered that Twitter must turn over information about the account @whyspertech. That account allegedly forged FBI documents falsely linking Rich’s killing to the Wikileaks hack of Democratic emails and provided them to Fox News. NPR first reported on the order. Twitter has sought to keep the identity of the user secret, arguing that disclosing that information would violate the First Amendment....

The motion to have former Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann's defamation lawsuit against the NY Times, Rolling Stone, ABC, & CBS dismissed was denied by the court. A previous motion by NBC was also denied. And the Washington Post has already settled the case against it by paying an undisclosed amount in damages. Lawyers for the Times called the latest ruling "out of step with modern libel laws. It has been a well-established principle that when the alleged victim is a public figure he must prove malice motivated the inaccurate media reporting and the derogatory statements made about...

In spite of the findings of an independent investigation and the rulings of a Kentucky grand jury, leftists are still claiming that Louisville Metro Police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly is a “murderer.” Mattingly was one of the officers involved in the shooting of Breonna Taylor. Taylor was the 26-year-old black woman who was killed on March 13 when police officers executed a warrant on her apartment during a narcotics investigation. As leftists continue to defame Mattingly’s character, the officer’s lawyer has promised that legal recourse will be sought out to right the many wrongs of the left’s ignorant claims. Many of these...

Rapper Cardi B was reportedly hit with a defamation lawsuit after she allegedly shared “edited” video of an altercation with people on a Long Island beach. The beachgoers are suing Cardi B, the rapper’s sister, Hennessy Carolina, and Michelle Diaz for assault, battery, defamation, and civil rights violations from an alleged altercation that occurred Sept. 6, according to an article published by ABC 7. “These peaceful Suffolk County residents were quietly enjoying a Sunday at the Smith Point beach with their families, when rap celebrity Hennessy Carolina suddenly approached them, raging, spitting, insulting, assaulting, defaming and threatening them, all the...

U.S. Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a Bill Clinton appointee, allowed Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times to proceed, saying that a jury should decide whether editorial page editor James Bennet acted with “actual malice” in writing that Palin was responsible for “political incitement” that led to the mass shooting in Tuscon, Arizona, in January 2011. The Times published the editorial in the wake of a June 2017 mass shooting by a deranged leftist who targeted Republican members of Congress at their baseball practice. The Tuscon shooter was mentally disturbed; accusations against Palin had long since been disproved....

The Washington Post is the latest news organization to settle a defamation lawsuit launched by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann over its botched coverage of a viral confrontation with a Native American elder that had portrayed the Kentucky teen as the aggressor. Sandmann announced the victory on Twitter. "On 2/19/19, I filed $250M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post. Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit. Thanks to @ToddMcMurtry & @LLinWood for their advocacy. Thanks to my family & millions of you who have stood your ground by supporting me. I still have more to do," Sandmann...

It took a while to catch up to her, but far-left MSNBC host Joy Reid may soon finally be forced to pay up for the alleged crime of defaming a Trump supporter. On Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reportedly revived a libel suit against her that had been filed two years ago by a Trump supporter. And by doing so, the court reportedly put the entire establishment media — known for frequently defaming anyone to the right of Karl Marx — in a precarious spot. It all started two years go this July when a left-wing activist, Alan...

Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. joined "Hannity" Wednesday to explain why the school filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times over its coverage of the university's response to the coronavirus pandemic. "Not only are they a bigoted bunch of liars, and also [a] BuzzFeed type click bait publication now," Falwell told host Sean Hannity. "But they're also stupid, because they came on campus. We had 25, at least, 'No Trespassing' signs everywhere, and they were dumb enough to take pictures of the signs and publish them. "So we got warrants out for their arrest and...

BOSTON – Six former employees of eBay, Inc. have been charged with leading a cyberstalking campaign targeting the editor and publisher of a newsletter that eBay executives viewed as critical of the company. The alleged harassment included sending the couple anonymous, threatening messages, disturbing deliveries – including a box of live cockroaches, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig mask – and conducting covert surveillance of the victims. James Baugh, 45, of San Jose, Calif., eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety & Security, was arrested today and charged by criminal complaint with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with...

The debate about whether social media companies should have protection from liability misses a larger question about their role in American society. There’s nothing like a row between Twitter and President Trump to turn everyone into an expert on 47 U.S. Code § 230, a heretofore obscure section of federal law that deals with liability protections for companies like Twitter.Go on social media right now and you’re bound to find friends, neighbors, and colleagues opining on federal statutes and citing old Supreme Court cases to bolster their arguments that we have to do this or that right now to save the...

The subject came up at today’s White House briefing via a “question” from One America News, which sounded less like an actual question and more like a White-House-scripted talking point presented in the form of a question. Wouldn’t Trump totally destroy Scarborough on discovery if he dared file a lawsuit over his Lori Klausutis smears? Q: Would Trump welcome a defamation suit from Joe Scarborough?McENANY: I would refer you back to my previous comments that the audio from the Don Imus show is disturbing — there is a lot of laughing & joking about this matter that is certainly...

If Twitter wants to editorialize and 'factcheck' President TrumpÂ’s tweets with disclaimers, then it should be treated like any other publisher. TwitterÂ’s decision this week to append a disclaimer to President TrumpÂ’s tweets about the risks of mail-in ballot fraud should be enough, at long last, for us to dispense with the fiction that Twitter is nothing more than a neutral platform.ItÂ’s not, it never has been, and itÂ’s time to stop pretending otherwise.Set aside the relative merits of TrumpÂ’s comments and the entire debate about whether mass voting by mail is a good idea, because thatÂ’s not whatÂ’s important...

Many suffered collateral damage in the Deep State’s scheme to take down Donald Trump, but few will find justice. On Thursday, federal Judge Leonie Brinkema tossed Svetlana Lokhova’s defamation lawsuit against Stefan Halper and a slew of legacy media outlets. Brinkema’s 41-page opinion detailing why the Russian-born U.K. citizen had no recourse for the damage inflicted on her by the SpyGate plotters and their partners in the press exposed the sad reality of this wide-ranging scandal: many suffered collateral damage in the Deep State’s scheme to take down Trump, but few will find justice.Lokhova, an historian and former Ph.D. student...

The Trump campaign’s filing of a libel lawsuit against the so-called "extremely biased" New York Times was a "clever" move but the case will likely be “dismissed,” according to Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano. The lawsuit argued that the newspaper's March 27, 2019 op-ed titled “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo" amounted to a knowingly false smear intended to "improperly influence the presidential election in November 2020." "They did a bad thing," Trump said at a coronavirus press conference later Wednesday, before hinting at more litigation. "There will be more coming. There will be more coming.”

Weeks after their classmate Nicholas Sandmann achieved victory in a lawsuit against CNN for the network’s role in broadcasting a defamatory narrative against him, a group of Covington Catholic students are launching new lawsuits against a list of media liberals who dishonestly attacked the students over the infamous incident at the Lincoln Memorial in 2019...The case was filed in the Kenton County Circuit Court on Tuesday.

George Zimmerman wants a day in court against two of the leading Democratic presidential contenders, accusing them of defamation. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Florida, the man who killed Trayvon Martin in self-defense in 2012 accused Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of “maliciously defam[ing]” Mr. Zimmerman, using the killing “as a pretext to demagogue and falsely brand Zimmerman as a white supremacist and racist to their millions of Twitter followers.” Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges on traditional self-defense grounds, because Martin attacked him and beat his head against the ground, supposedly for profiling the black teen...

Attorney Alan Dershowitz filed a defamation countersuit against fellow lawyer David Boies, claiming Boies, his law firm and Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Guiffre attempted to extort money from rich and powerful men for private settlements. The suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress and extortion. It names billionaire Leslie Wexner as one of alleged extortion targets. This lawsuit comes in response to Boies’s suit against Dershowitz that was filed in November, accusing the attorney of disparaging Boies’s law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, by calling it “the law firm of extortion,...

Washington (CNN) -- Tulsi Gabbard filed a defamation lawsuit against Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, alleging the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee "lied" about the Hawaii congresswoman's ties to Russia during a 2019 interview. The lawsuit stems from an October 2019 interview in which Clinton said that a Democrat running in the presidential primary was being groomed to run as a third-party candidate and was a favorite of the Russians. "I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be...

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday against Hillary Clinton seeking $50 million in damages, claiming the former Democratic presidential nominee "carelessly and recklessly impugned" her reputation when she suggested in October that one of the 2020 Democratic candidates is "the favorite of the Russians." The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, says it aims to hold Clinton and other "political elites" accountable for "distorting the truth in the middle of a critical Presidential election." It also says Gabbard suffered an economic loss to be proven at trial.