This hasn’t been the best month for the 45th president of the United States.
Besides losing both the electoral and popular vote to Joe Biden, a federal judge today dismissed his campaign’s libel lawsuit against CNN for a critical opinion piece that was published last year.
Judge Michael Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled that President Trump’s camp had failed to prove that CNN had demonstrated actual malice towards him, the legal standard required to prove libel against a public figure.
Brown, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump, said the campaign has until the end of the month to file an amended complaint in order to proceed with the lawsuit.
Trump’s campaign filed the lawsuit in March, amid a flurry of similar complaints lodged against other major media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The lawsuit alleged that a 2019 opinion piece written by Larry Noble, a campaign finance advocate and former Federal Election Commission official, and published on CNN’s website falsely claimed that Trump’s campaign had “assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020 and has decided to leave that option on the table.”
Brown considered CNN’s contention that the political op/ed couldn’t reasonably be understood as actionable false facts.
While the judge disagrees with the cable newscaster about how to interpret the statement in question, finding it is indeed capable of being proven true or false, he takes note of the context of how Noble uses soft language and is signaling the expression of opinion overall.
That noted, the case comes down to Trump’s failure to plead knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of the truth.
He is, after all, a public figure, and while he has often called for libel laws to be relaxed, public figures still need to demonstrate actual malice.
“Most of the allegations in the complaint regarding actual malice are conclusory,” writes the judge, also not accepting that an alleged record of anti-Trump bias on Noble’s part is sufficient.
For example, with respect to how Noble once tweeted that Trump “cheats and lies,” Brown writes, “The tweet might show Mr. Noble’s ill will towards the President, but it fails to plead actual malice in the constitutional sense—that is, it does not show Mr. Noble made the Statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.”
As such, Trump’s complaint is dismissed.