A Georgia federal court judge on Wednesday rejected a defamation lawsuit brought by President Trump against CNN. The lawsuit filed in March, targeted an opinion piece from Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission who said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should have charged Trump campaign officials with soliciting dirt on his opponents.
“Most of the allegations in the complaint regarding actual malice are conclusory,” writes the judge, also not accepting that an alleged record of anti-Trump bias on Noble’s part is sufficient.
Brown considered CNN’s contention that the political op/ed could not reasonably be understood as actionable false facts. While the judge disagrees with the network about how to interpret the statement in question, finding it is indeed capable of being proven true or false, he takes note of the context of how Noble uses soft language and is signaling the expression of opinion overall.
The case comes down to Trump’s failure to plead knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of the truth.
For example, with respect to how Noble once tweeted that Trump “cheats and lies,” Brown writes, “The tweet might show Mr. Noble’s ill will towards the President, but it fails to plead actual malice in the constitutional sense—that is, it does not show Mr. Noble made the Statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.”
