April 2, 2018: Bunnies at Easter and Suits for Libel

 

4/2/18: Trump wakes up excited. He’s looking forward to the White House Easter Egg Roll. Aides inform him there will be bunnies. 

The Big Orange Buffoon is disappointed when festivities kick off and all he sees are little kids. 

He was expecting Playmates.

 

* 

YOU MAY RECALL that during his campaign Candidate Buffoon insisted we needed to “open up our libel laws” and make it easier to sue. A dozen women or more had accused him of sexual misconduct. 

He was going to act quickly one he took office. “All of these liars will be sued when the election is over,” Trump promised. 

Today, he may be sorry he suggested the change. Courts have found over the years that calling someone a liar can be an insult, an opinion, or hyperbole. Those are forms of protected free speech. You can call the coach of the Cincinnati Bengals a “major loser.” That would be safe under the First Amendment. Cheryl Jacobus, a political consultant, tried to sue Trump for defamation, for saying just that about her. A New York appeals court tossed her case. Such “vague and simplistic insults,” said the judge, did not rise to the level of defamation. 

Okay. Sure. The judge said the president was “simplistic.” But you can’t take the Buffoon to court just because he’s a buffoon. 

In the same way, in 1985, a real estate developer sued an architecture critic, after the critic said one of the developer’s buildings would be an eyesore, “an atrocious, ugly monstrosity.” That too was opinion, therefore free speech. The developer – Donald J. Trump – lost his case. 

The president may now face legal jeopardy, not involving Russians. Summer Zervos, once a contestant on The Apprentice, was one of many to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct during the campaign. 

Trump responded bluntly. “To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately,” he said, as Zervos claimed. Trump issued tweets directed at Ms. Zervos specifically. At times he called all accusations against him “total lies” and “totally phony stories.” Now the judge charged with handling Zervos’ suit for defamation has ruled that absolute denials can be classed as “assertions of fact” and may represent grounds for a libel judgment. 

What this means is Trump may have to sit and be deposed. 

Statements from other women may be admitted as evidence to bolster Zervos’ case. Or, as an article by the American Bar Association put it in 2016, “a libel bully” may end up a “libel loser.”