By Ken Stone / Times of San Diego / Oct. 21, 2019
Backed by an all-star team of lawyers, Rachel Maddow is asking a San Diego federal judge to throw out the $10 million defamation suit by the owner of One America News Network.
And it could happen as soon as Dec. 16, according to a motion filed Monday that cites California’s anti-SLAPP statute.
MSNBC’s highest-rated host was merely exercising her First Amendment right to express an opinion (“based on undisputed facts”) when she delivered a “single rhetorical flourish” and “colorful rhetorical hyperbole.”
That was her July 22 comment that San Diego-based Herring Networks’ OAN — termed “the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America” — is “paid Russian propaganda” because it employed a San Diego reporter also working for Sputnik, a Russian state-backed news outlet.
Maddow’s segment was based on a Daily Beast story by Kevin Poulsen headlined “Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist.”
In a 43-page motion to strike the complaint, famed lawyer Theodore J. “Ted” Boutrous Jr. said on behalf of Maddow and her employers, including Comcast:
“Plaintiff does not contest the facts reported by The Daily Beast. To the contrary, its Complaint confirms and elaborates on them, conceding that for more than four years, [Kristian Brunovich Rouz] has written approximately 1,300 articles for Sputnik and was paid about $11,500 per year for doing so … and that ‘Sputnik News is affiliated with the Russian government.’”
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I’m about halfway through her new book “Blowout”; reads like a well-written mystery novel, but real and terrifying.
I would not want to go up against her in court.
Very Trumpy tactics, sue truth and reality into submission. The propagandist chose the wrong person to go after. It appears Rachel is armed with facts and bigger pockets.