Crackpot history & the right to lie
By 
Ammo Bundy n’ pals are living out the maxim “Talk shit, get hit.” With a massive defamation settlement judgement. [Edited for clarity. Thanks to Stuart, who is not like all of the other people, here, in the trailer park.]
Far-right activist Ammon Bundy, who led the takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, an associate and three of their groups must pay over $50 million in damages for accusing a hospital of child trafficking and harassing medical staff, a jury has decided.
The defamation lawsuit by St. Luke’s Regional Health accused Bundy and Diego Rodriguez of making defamatory statements against the hospital and its employees after Rodriguez’s infant grandson was removed from his family for several days and taken to St. Luke’s amid concerns for his health.
[…]
Bundy responded by urging his followers to protest at the hospital and at the homes of child protection service workers, law enforcement officers and others involved in the child protection case. Rodriguez wrote on his website that the baby was “kidnapped,” and suggested that the state and people involved in the case were engaged in “child trafficking” for profit.
Protect the babieeeeeze!! No not that way!!!
The protests caused lock downs at hospitals in two cities, with the ensuing mayhem and risk to life that followed. The doctor who examined the baby in the E.R. said she is going to leave the state for a while. Did anyone really think these assholes would be content to protest reproductive health care providers?
Who knows what, if any, of that money the hospital will ever see. But it is good to see right wing thugs learn that people won’t tolerate their bullshit.
Meanwhile, facile First Amendment defenses are afoot.
Rudy Giuliani has conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming two Georgia election workers committed ballot fraud during the 2020 presidential race but is arguing that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.
That assertion by Giuliani, who as part of Donald Trump’s legal team tried to overturn results in battleground states, came in a filing Tuesday in a lawsuit by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. Their lawsuit from December 2021 accused the former New York City mayor of defaming them by falsely stating that they had engaged in fraud while counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.
The lawsuit says Giuliani repeatedly pushed debunked claims that Freeman and Moss — mother and daughter — pulled out suitcases of illegal ballots and committed other acts of fraud to try to alter the outcome of the race.
You might think you can imagine the nightmare his lies unleashed, but Freeman and Moss are Black women. So you probably can’t. Republicans also threatened Moss’ teenage son and a mob went to her grandmother’s house to make a citizens arrest lynch her daughter and granddaughter. It’s a miracle they didn’t frighten her to death.
Rudy admits he lied but is sticking to his free speech defense, because it was like, just his opinion, man. I doubt U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell will be pleased to see that argument a second time.
Giuliani’s third prong of attack on plaintiffs’ defamation claim is that all his challenged statements are protected opinion. Although, generally, opinions are not actionable because they are protected by the First Amendment, “even a per se opinion is actionable if it can reasonably be understood as implying provable facts.”
[…]
The D.C. Circuit has provided guidance on how a protected opinion can bear a defamatory implication, explaining that “[j]ust as a speaker is not immunized from liability simply by prefacing otherwise defamatory statements with the words ‘In my opinion . . . ,’ defamatory assessments based on incorrect ‘facts’ stated by the speaker are also actionable. Thus, the statement ‘In my opinion Jones is a liar because he cheats on his taxes’ could be libelous if the allegation of cheating were untrue.”
[…]
Giuliani’s alleged statements accuse plaintiffs of criminal activity—which can be proven to be true or false in court— and, consequently, he cannot seek refuge under the opinion doctrine for the same reasons articulated in Moldea v. New York Times Company. Even if Giuliani made clear that his statements were his own subjective views, those statements still included accusations of election fraud that can be verified as true or false.
It will be like receiving the rancid leftovers of a meal that you didn’t care for the first time around. And they’re being served by Giuliani.
In the meantime, OANINSM network have already reached the pot of finding out at the end of one fucking around rainbow. They settled with Moss and Freeman in May 2022.
They are also suing Jim Hoft and Gateway Pundit in a separate case. You can read about it, and the organization that is helping the victims of a right wing smear campaign here.
People who post off-topic comments are the human equivalent of that brown ooze one Rudy’s face.
