“Shockingly baseless”: Legal experts mock “bad faith, unethical” Trump lawsuit trying to silence CNN

Former President Donald Trump on Monday filed a lawsuit accusing CNN of defamation, seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

The 29-page suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, accuses of CNN playing a part in a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander against the Plaintiff,” that “escalated” recently as the TV network “fears” Trump will run for president in 2024. 

The lawsuit claimed that as part of CNN’s effort to “tilt the political balance to the Left,” its hosts used “scandalous, false, and defamatory” labels like “racist,” “Russian lackey,” “insurrectionist,” and “Hitler,” when describing Trump. 

The lawsuit highlights several examples of CNN appearing to compare Trump to Hitler. In one, it mentions a January 2022 special report called “The Fight to Save Democracy” by host Fareed Zakaria, which included footage of Hitler. 

Another example includes an interview conducted by former anchor Brian Stelter in which psychiatrist Allen Frances claimed that “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century.”

Trump, whose presidency was marked by discrediting journalists and labeling mainstream media as biased, usually employed empty threats of suing outlets over news coverage he disagreed with. 

On rare occasions, his campaign sued the New York Times in 2019 over an op-ed suggesting a “quid pro quo” with Russian officials, which was later dismissed. Similarly, he went after The Washington Post for libel over an opinion piece that linked his campaign to Russian electoral interference. The suit is still pending. 

Some legal experts blasted the lawsuit, calling it a publicity stunt. National security attorney Bradley Moss tweeted that the “lawsuit is garbage.”

First Amendment lawyer Ken White also weighed in on Twitter, saying that the lawsuit was “one of the most shockingly baseless, bad faith, unethical abuses of the judicial system to suppress speech I’ve ever seen. Absolutely contemptible garbage.”

“The reason this case is frivolous, bad faith, and performative is that it explicitly attacks political opinion as if it were false statement of fact,” he wrote. “It attacks the absolute core of the First Amendment.”

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Adam Steinbaugh, a First Amendment lawyer for pro-free speech organization FIRE, noted that the “First Amendment protects the right to opine that Donald Trump is a racist, demagogic insurrectionist and compare him to any number of dictators.”

Barb McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and University of Michigan law professor, also chimed in on Twitter saying that the “lawsuit is a naked publicity stunt that Trump knows will be dismissed before discovery. It will never reach deposition stage. He will make more money off of fundraising over this legally baseless lawsuit than he will pay the court in sanctions. Winning!”

Others like former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti have described Trump’s legal action as a “media stunt”. “This lawsuit isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” Mariotti tweeted. 

The same day Trump’s legal team filed a lawsuit against CNN, he posted a statement on Truth Social, his social-media site, warning that other publications would also face legal action for their “disinformation” about the 2020 election that he lost. 

“In the coming weeks and months we will also be filing lawsuits against a large number of other Fake News Media Companies for their lies, defamation, and wrongdoing,” the statement said, “including as it pertains to ‘The Big Lie,’ that they used so often in reference to their disinformation attack on Presidential Election of 2020.”