Another topic Crandall explores is when and why people turn to free speech arguments to defend racist speech.
“People pull out free speech when they’re defending racist speech, but not when they’re defending simply aggressive, or negative speech,” he says.
The United States goes further than many other countries in its legal protections for speech — even hate-filled speech. Some people have used free speech claims, for example, to defend the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia several weeks ago.
In this episode, we look more closely at how people use free speech defenses, and why their true motivations might not be apparent — even to them.
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.
Steve Bannon Declares ‘Season of War’ Against GOP Establishment
In his speech Saturday, Bannon basked in that victory and warned McConnell that his position was more precarious than ever.
“Up on Capitol Hill, because I’ve been getting calls, it’s like before the Ides of March. They’re just finding out who’s going to be Brutus to your Julius Caesar,” Bannon said. “Yeah, Mitch, the donors aren’t happy, they’ve all left you.”
He told the crowd that Moore’s victory has spooked the establishment elites as it shows that money doesn’t matter, even going so far as to say that the more money they spend, “the fewer votes they get.”
.. Bannon warned Republicans who think they can hide from backing President Trump that their failure to support him will haunt them in the midterm primary seasons.
“No one can run and hide on this one, these folks are coming for you,” he warned. “The day of taking a few conservatives votes and hiding is over. These folks aren’t rubes, these folks aren’t idiots.”
.. Bannon also argued that the power of the Alabama vote can be shown in recent developments from the White House. He noted that since Moore’s Alabama victory, the Trump administration has issued an executive order on religious freedom, stopped the Obamacare insurance bailouts, pulled the U.S. out of UNESCO, decertified Iran’s compliance with the Iran nuclear deal, and pushed for a middle-class tax cut.
“Those are not random events folks, that is victory begets victory,” he said. “We owe that to Judge Roy Moore and the good men and women in Alabama because that all came from them.”
.. He urged Republican lawmakers who were on the fence on Trump to be more vocal in their support of his agenda as a way to avoid the populist storm brewing ahead of the 2018 midterms: “You can come to a stick and say ‘I am not going to vote for Mitch McConnell for Majority Leader’ and you can come to a stick and you can say ‘I’m going to do away with the filibuster so the president can implement his program.’”
“But until that time, they’re coming for you,” he warned.