Former President Donald Trump congratulated the conservative Project Veritas after it scored a legal victory over the New York Times.
“I want to congratulate Project Veritas on their big win on the New York Times,” Trump said in a video posted by Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe on Twitter. “Now the suit will continue, and whatever you can do for their legal defense fund, we’re with them all the way. They do incredible work. They find things that nobody would even believe possible. So James, congratulations.”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” O’Keefe responded.
President Trump congratulates Project Veritas on win in defamation lawsuit Project Veritas v New York Times
“Whatever you can do for their legal defense fund. We’re with them all the way.”
Support our fight: https://t.co/62tlJSDW1e pic.twitter.com/yQ06JLCpVA
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 23, 2021
The video comes after a New York judge denied the New York Times’s request to dismiss the Project Veritas lawsuit against the paper over an article that claimed Project Veritas’s reporting on alleged voter fraud was “deceptive,” “false,” and “with no verifiable evidence.”
“The facts submitted by Veritas could indicate more than standard, garden variety media bias and support a plausible inference of actual malice,” New York Supreme Court Justice Charles Wood wrote in the ruling. “There is a substantial basis in law to proceed to permit the plaintiff to conduct discovery and to then attempt to meet its higher standard of proving liability through clear and convincing evidence of actual malice.”
“If a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader, including a court that may need to determine whether it is factor opinion, that it is opinion,” Wood continued.
Mario Balaban, Project Veritas’s media relations manager, said O’Keefe was “very pleased” to have met Trump and “even more pleased” that he signaled support for the outlet’s legal defense fund “so that more lawsuits can be filed in the future against dishonest media outlets.”
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“They’re now being forced to tell the truth under oath,” Balaban said.
