President Trump’s libel lawsuit against the New York Times has no hope of moving forward, according to a Fox News legal analyst.
The president’s campaign filed a libel lawsuit against the New York Times over a story that was published in the opinion section of the newspaper. Trump accused the outlet of “intentionally publishing false statements” about his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the article. Mercedes Colwin, a legal analyst for Fox News, brushed off the lawsuit as “dead on arrival.”
“This case is D.O.A., dead on arrival. Why do I say that? When you have a libel case, especially against an op-ed editor, the very nature of an op-ed is that it’s opinion. There’s lots of well-settled law that says when you’re expressing an opinion, you are devoid of making a defamatory statement,” Colwin explained on the network Sunday.
She continued, “And even when — president said at that press conference that, well, he got the opinion wrong. Well, by his own admission, you’re talking and criticizing an opinion. The case law is very clear. When you express an opinion, you’re not actually making a statement that’s defamatory.”
As Colwin noted, Trump said in a press conference on Wednesday that the New York Times story was “beyond an opinion” and claimed there would be “more” lawsuits coming against the newspaper or other outlets for their coverage. Colwin argued that Trump was trying to use the lawsuits as a “deterrent” but added that she doesn’t believe it will “stop anything” because the lawsuit will likely be dismissed by the courts.
Trump’s lawsuit referenced an article by Max Frankel, who was the executive editor of the New York Times from 1986 to 1994, in which he accused Trump of having “an overarching deal” with “Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy.” Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation revealed last year no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians in 2016, though the Kremlin did meddle in the election via other methods.
