Michael Cohen Drops Defamation Suits Against BuzzFeed, Fusion GPS Over Russia Dossier

Decision comes amid investigation of Donald Trump’s personal attorney for potential bank fraud and campaign-finance violations

President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has dropped a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed over the publication of an unsubstantiated intelligence dossier that alleged he played a role in working with Russia to help Mr. Trump become president.

Mr. Cohen is also dropping a similar defamation suit against Fusion GPS, the private investigation firm responsible for the dossier.

Since filing the suits in January, Mr. Cohen has come under criminal investigation for potential bank fraud and campaign-finance violations. His attorney said the probe made it difficult to continue with the defamation cases.

If Trump Has Been Defamed, He Should Sue 

Why not take action against Michael Wolff and his publisher?

.. he quotes Steve Bannon, formerly the chief executive of the Trump campaign and chairman of Trump propaganda outlet Breitbart, characterizing meetings between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian operatives as “unpatriotic” and “treasonous.” Bannon also is quoted as saying that there is “zero” chance that Donald Trump himself was unaware of the meetings. There are many amusing anecdotes in the book that tend to confirm the worst suspicions of the administration’s critics.

.. Wolff has been criticized as an overly free practitioner of what used to be known as the New Journalism, liberally applying literary techniques to recreate (some of his critics would say to simply create) scenes and interactions to which he was not directly privy.

.. (Another lupine journalist, the unparalleled Tom Wolfe, is most closely associated with that style of writing.)

.. Trump is using threats of lawsuits mainly as instruments of harassment

.. Usually, those threats die out for one of two reasons: The first is that a libel action requires the publication of a claim of fact, rather than a judgment or an opinion. If you publish “Jones is a rapist,” that’s a statement of fact, a claim that Jones has committed a particular crime. If you publish “Jones is a man of low character and does not deserve your vote for city council,” then that is a statement of opinion.

.. The second thing that most often stops a libel suit in its tracks is that the claim has to be false.

.. It’s $500 or more every time you pick up the phone and talk to your lawyer.

.. Steve Bannon, living high on those Seinfeld royalties. (Bannon fortified his fortune with “a show about nothing.” Poetic.)

.. To have committed libel, Wolff and his publishers must have printed a claim of fact that is: 1. false; 2. defamatory, meaning that it did some kind of damage to Trump; 3. published with actual malice, meaning Wolff knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard as to whether it was.

.. Given that most of Trump’s net worth is tied up in his “brand,” which is another way of saying his public persona, establishing damages should not be very difficult, either

.. As for the actual malice, if Wolff has indeed manufactured quotations or events, that would go a long way toward establishing that he knew he was publishing falsehoods.

.. The problem, of course, is that a lawsuit would lead to discovery, meaning that the president and the people around him would be questioned under penalty of perjury. One thing Steve Bannon and President Trump have in common is that each lies habitually, even in circumstances in which the lie serves no obvious purpose.

.. One wonders what either man would actually say under questioning, to say nothing of what might be said by a Jared Kushner or a Kellyanne Conway.

Trump may face a reckoning in case brought by female accuser

But by turning personal and branding the women liars, Trump has perhaps unwittingly played into a cutting-edge strategy in the legal pursuit of sexual misconduct — claims of defamation such as those used against comedian Bill Cosby and in a lesser-known New York case, argued by two lawyers who are now representing Zervos.

.. Trump could be called to testify, with the unwelcome specter of a former president looming over him: It was Bill Clinton’s misleading sworn testimony — not the repeated allegations of sexual harassment against him — that eventually led to his impeachment.

“It’s almost a train you can’t stop going down the tracks,” said Joseph Cammarata, who represented Paula Jones against Clinton and, more recently, represented seven Cosby accusers in a defamation suit. “It opens him up to have to answer questions about sexual relations, other relationships, what might have been said, to open up your whole life.”

.. The use of defamation to litigate an underlying allegation of sexual misconduct addresses other challenges: Often, the statute of limitations is up before accusations come to light; in some instances, the he-said-she-said nature of the testimony makes accusations hard to prove.

.. Zervos is represented by Gloria Allred and her New York based co-counsel, Mariann Meier Wang, who declined to make Zervos available for questions. Allred says she represents Zervos pro bono on her website, where she appeals for donations to pay Zervos’s other legal expenses and says excess contributions will go to rape crisis centers.

.. In news conferences, she has been asked whether targets could include outtakes from “The Apprentice,” which might show how Trump treated female contestants such as Zervos.

.. After Zervos made her allegations, Trump posted a statement on his campaign website: “To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago.” He decried what he called “made up events,” “100% fabricated and made-up charges,” saying in the last presidential debate that the women were put forward by the campaign of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, or motivated by the desire for “ten minutes of fame,” according to Zervos’s complaint.

.. “After he called me a liar I was threatened, bullied and saw my business targeted,”

.. Trump’s attorneys argue that the president is immune and that the comments he made were political opinion and therefore “squarely protected by the First Amendment.”

.. In 1997, a Supreme Court ruling made it possible for a sitting president to be sued for private actions that occurred before he took office. Trump’s attorneys are arguing that Clinton v. Jones, which applies to federal litigation, does not apply in state courts.

.. “That is where [Trump’s attorneys] are putting their linchpin,”

.. If she is deemed a private citizen, Zervos simply would have to show that Trump was negligent toward the truth. If she is a public figure, the bar is far higher.

.. “She would have to prove he knew [what he said] was false or had reckless disregard for the truth,”

.. Bill Pruitt, who worked on “The Apprentice,” tweeted, “As a producer on seasons 1 & 2 of #theApprentice I assure you: when it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse.”

.. If, on the other hand, the suit does proceed, it could encourage more litigation against a president who entered office with an unusual array of lawsuits in his wake.

And if Zervos wins, her victory could embolden other accusers.

“There are 10 or 11 other women waiting in the wings,” Rabin said.

Grade Point Tufts postpones Scaramucci talk after he threatens to sue student

In his letter, Lieberman cited a case in which even statements that contained some amount of opinion were found to be defamatory when they claimed a public official had been unethical, and wrote that Scaramucci “has never been charged nor found to have committed any ethical violation. . .”

 .. Scaramucci, a 1986 graduate of the university, was appointed to a five-year term on the board in 2016.
.. Scaramucci did not respond immediately to a request for comment Monday, but he responded publicly on Twitter, saying, “All I need is an apology and correction. Get the facts right. Defamation is not unflattering coverage. It’s defamation.”He also wrote, “I asked for an apology. Plain and simple. In our country defamation comes with its consequences.”

.. “Sending a graduate student a letter accusing him of something two days before Thanksgiving and demanding a response within five days is clearly mean-spirited,” Rose said. “The ACLU of Massachusetts is not going to allow Mr. Caballero or anyone who’s a journalist to be bullied into silence. There’s a long history in this country of trying to use defamation law to silence critics.”

.. Frederick M. Lawrence, the secretary and chief executive of the Phi Beta Kappa society, who is a lecturer at Georgetown Law, said, “The Supreme Court has said when a public figure is involved, defamation requires that the reporting was done with knowledge of falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth. The burden of proof for a plaintiff who is a public figure in a defamation suit is very, very stiff.”