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A federal decide has dismissed a $475 million defamation lawsuit that former President Donald J. Trump filed in opposition to CNN, ruling that all the CNN statements that Mr. Trump cited have been opinion and, due to this fact, Mr. Trump couldn’t sue for defamation.
The swimsuit, which the previous president filed in October in U.S. District Court docket in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, alleged a “marketing campaign of dissuasion within the type of libel and slander” that, Mr. Trump asserted, had escalated “as CNN fears the plaintiff will run for president in 2024.” The lawsuit stated that the community’s use of the phrase “the large lie” in reference to Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election was tantamount to evaluating him to Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
Decide Raag Singhal, who was nominated to the District Court docket by Mr. Trump in 2019, said in dismissing the swimsuit late Friday night time that CNN’s use of the phrase in reference to Mr. Trump’s election challenges “doesn’t give rise to a believable inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or another group of individuals.”
The decide added: “The Court docket finds Nazi references within the political discourse (made by whichever ‘facet’) to be odious and repugnant. However unhealthy rhetoric is just not defamation when it doesn’t embody false statements of truth.”
Mr. Singhal dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, which means Mr. Trump is just not permitted to file one other lawsuit below the identical reasoning.
CNN declined to remark.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s presidential marketing campaign, Steven Cheung, stated in a press release, “We agree with the extremely revered decide’s findings that CNN’s statements about President Trump are repugnant,” including, “CNN can be held liable for their wrongful mistreatment of President Trump and his supporters.”
Mr. Trump has a historical past of submitting lawsuits in opposition to information organizations, together with The New York Occasions, for protection he believes to be crucial.
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