{"id":2785,"date":"2018-12-20T14:52:44","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T14:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?p=2785"},"modified":"2018-12-20T14:53:19","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T14:53:19","slug":"trump-dossier-libel-suit-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/2018\/12\/20\/trump-dossier-libel-suit-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump dossier libel suit dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a victory for First Amendment advocates,\u00a0<\/strong> a federal court ruled Dec. 19, 2018\u00a0 that news articles about the Steel Dossier, which alleges illegal and immoral acts by Donald Trump and his campaign in 2016, were protected by the “privilege” defense against defamation suits.<\/p>\n

The dossier (memo)<\/a> was written by former British Intelligence head of the Russia desk, Christopher Steele and circulated in the months before and after the November 2016 election.\u00a0 \u00a0It was\u00a0 published\u00a0 January 10, 2017, by BuzzFeed News with the headline:\u00a0 \u00a0These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties to Russia<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

BuzzFeed cautioned that the dossier\u00a0 \u201cincludes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the major subject of the dossier was Donald Trump and his attorneys and advisors, the suit was\u00a0<\/span>filed<\/a>\u00a0by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian whose name was peripheral to the events described in the dossier.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In her ruling, federal judge Ursula Ungaro of\u00a0 Miami granted a motion by Buzzfeed magazine to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that the press was protected by the legal doctrine of\u00a0 fair report privilege.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Privilege is one of three major defenses against libel suits. (The other two are truth<\/strong> and fair comment<\/strong>).\u00a0 \u00a0The defense of privilege\u00a0gives journalists the ability to report on official government proceedings whether or not information in the proceedings is provably true or not.\u00a0 \u00a0The doctrine of privilege allows unfettered news reporting of conflicting ideas or versions of events that may surface in trials, executive memos or congressional hearings.<\/p>\n

According to a Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression article<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0the decision turned on the question of whether the report was an official proceeding.\u00a0 In many cases, courts have interpreted proceedings to be official whether or not they are open to the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a victory for First Amendment advocates,\u00a0 a federal court ruled Dec. 19, 2018\u00a0 that news articles about the Steel Dossier, which alleges illegal and immoral acts by Donald Trump and his campaign in 2016, were protected by the “privilege” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-libel","category-politics-media-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2787,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions\/2787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}