HAMMER: Conservative Network Claims Leftists Defamed It. Here’s How The Supreme Court Botched Defamation Law.

As The Daily Caller reports and as independently verified by documents obtained by The Daily Wire, conservative television network One America News Network (OANN) has issued cease-and-desist retraction letters to both The Daily Beast and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. The letters, which were sent last Thursday, allege that Maddow and The Daily Beast’s Kevin Poulson alike defamed OANN by linking the network to the Russian government and, in the case of Maddow, decrying the network as “literally … Russian propaganda.” The cease-and-desist letters give the recipients a deadline of August 15 to issue public retractions.

The involvement of a prominent conservative media outlet in a defamation dispute against other media personalities provides a good opportunity to delve into the state of defamation law in the United States. Specifically, it is important to understand why a hypothetical defamation lawsuit filed by OANN would face an uphill battle under existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent — but why that might not be the case (perhaps especially as applied to Maddow) under an originalist understanding of the First Amendment.