It’s a “he said, he said” fight with a twist and it’s soon time for the Supreme Court to rule that making wrong statements about what someone else stated can be addressed by the law.
That’s according to the American Center for Law and Justice, which has been working with famed lawyer and legal commentator Alan Dershowitz.
The genesis of the fight dates back to one of the Democrats’ failed impeach-and-remove agendas against President Donald Trump back when officials from within the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations were running their lawfare campaign against Trump at full speed.
Dershowitz, under questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about impeachment and grounds for that action, crafted a constitutional analysis about what does and does not constitute an impeachable offense.
He told senators actions motivated by personal financial gain – bribery, extortion, kickbacks – would absolutely remain impeachable offenses.
CNN immediately took the message to its viewers that he said “the exact opposite,” the ACLJ reported.
“CNN commentators declared that under the ‘Dershowitz Doctrine,’ bribery statutes were ‘gone’ and a president could do virtually anything to get reelected, directly contradicting what he actually said.”
Dershowitz sued, but so far has been blocked by a decades-old precedent that public figures have an extraordinary burden of proof for such disputes.
It was the New York Times v. Sullivan precedent and it’s time for it to go away, the ACLJ has argued.
“Even the courts that ruled against him acknowledged he had been lied about – but determined that they were bound by a 62-year-old Supreme Court precedent,” the legal team said.
“CNN cannot dispute the two most critical facts in this entire case. Professor Dershowitz never said a president could commit bribery or extortion without consequence. And CNN’s own commentators told millions of viewers that he had.”
One lower court judge, in fact, found CNN “simply lied about what Dershowitz had said.”
Now the network is unleashing “procedural smokescreens” to prevent the high court from taking the case and issuing a ruling.
The ACLJ explained, “When mainstream media outlets can falsely vilify, smear, and attack public figures with impunity, there is a fundamental problem in the law. That’s exactly what’s at stake in our case representing Harvard Law School professor emeritus and famed constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz against CNN.”
The ACLJ pointed out Sullivan was decided back in the 1960s “when there were three TV networks and no internet. The media landscape has fundamentally changed. When courts can acknowledge defamation and still rule for the liar, the system is broken.”
“As we’ve said from the beginning, the First Amendment was designed to prevent government censorship – not to give CNN a license to lie about private citizens with impunity.”
WorldNetDaily previously reported when the Supreme Court took the unusual step of ordering CNN to respond to the case.
The Sullivan case claims plaintiffs who are public figures must prove “actual malice” by the defendants, a standard now being challenged.
