On Friday, President Trump’s re-election campaign sued CNN, claiming the network had published false and defamatory statements by stating the campaign “assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020 and has decided to leave that option on the table.”
The senior legal advisor for the Trump campaign, Jenna Ellis, told Fox News:
The complaint alleges CNN was aware of the falsity at the time it published them but did so for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign while misleading its own readers in the process … the campaign filed this lawsuit against CNN and the preceding suits against The New York Times and The Washington Post to hold the publishers accountable for their reckless false reporting and also to establish the truth.
The lawsuit states, “The Campaign, through counsel, sent a written demand to CNN on February 25, 2020, to retract and apologize for the aforementioned false and defamatory statements. CNN refused. The Campaign therefore was left with no alternative but to file this lawsuit to: publicly establish the truth, properly inform CNN’s readers and audience (and the rest of the world)of the true facts, and seek appropriate remedies for the harm caused by CNN’s false reporting and failure and retract and apologize for it.”
The lawsuit continues, “CNN has engaged in a systematic pattern of bias against the Campaign, designed to maliciously interfere with and damage its reputation and ultimately cause the organization to fail … On or about June 13, 2019, CNN published an article on the www,CNN.com website entitled ‘Soliciting dirt on your opponents from a foreign government is a crime. Mueller should have charged Trump campaign officials with it’ by Larry Noble, (the ‘Defamatory Article’).”
The lawsuit delineates why the article was false, citing examples such as then-Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stating in August 2018, “Since the beginning of his administration, President Trump has implemented a whole-of-government approach to safeguard our nations’ elections. The president has made it clear that his administration will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections from any nation-state or other dangerous actor.”
Another example: The White House issuing a statement in September 2018 saying, “The United States will not tolerate any form of foreign meddling in our elections.” A third example: May 13, 2019: The White House said it would not use any information hacked or stolen by foreign adversaries in the 2020 election.
The lawsuit then clearly accuses CNN of bias, writing: “It is not entirely surprising that CNN would publish such blatantly false statements against the Campaign. There is extensive evidence that CNN and its writer, Larry Noble, are extremely biased against the Campaign. This evidence includes, among other things, undercover video footage taken by the Project Veritas News Organization in which CNN staff members admit on camera that CNN’s coverage is extremely biased against the Campaign, the administration, and Republicans in general.”
The lawsuit concludes, “The Defamatory Article has forced, and will continue to force, the Campaign to expend funds on corrective advertisements and to otherwise publicize the fact that the Campaign is not seeking Russia’s help, nor leaving that ‘option on the table’ in the 2020 election campaign. The Campaign was damaged in an amount to be proven at trial, in the millions of dollars.”