by WorldTribune Staff, July 25, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
ABC News and George Stephanopoulos’s motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought by former President Donald Trump was denied by a federal judge on Wednesday.
Donald Trump’s defamation suit against ABC News and George Stephanopolous will proceed to the discovery phase.The 21-page ruling enables Trump’s lawsuit against the network and Stephanopoulos to move forward over the anchor repeatedly stating on-air while interviewing a lawmaker that Trump had been found “liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll civil case. A New York jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but not rape.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has ruled in favor of a Georgia doctor who MSNBC’s top personalities accused of performing “mass hysterectomies” on women at a Trump-era immigration facility in the state. The judge ruled that Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, and Chris Hayes made “verifiably false” statements about the doctor, who is suing NBC for $30 million.
In the Trump lawsuit vs ABC, U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga rejected several defenses ABC mounted, including that they were protected by a fair reporting privilege.
Trump cast the ruling as a “big win,” calling the anchor “liddle’ George Slopadopolus” in a post on Truth Social.
“Before you know it, the fake news media will be forced by the courts to start telling the truth,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s defamation lawsuit claims concern Stephanopoulos’s March 10 interview of South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace on “This Week.” While questioning the congresswoman about her endorsement of Trump, Stephanopoulos stated 10 times that a jury had found Trump liable for rape.
The federal lawsuit, filed in Miami, seeks an unspecified amount of damages.
Judge Altonaga’s decision enables the case to move into the discovery process and closer to trial.
In the MSNBC case, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District of Georgia found that Maddow, Wallace, and Hayes made 39 “verifiably false” allegations about Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist who treated detainees at a Georgia Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
A nurse at the facility had made a whistleblower complaint alleging that Amin was performing “mass hysterectomies,” many of which were medically unnecessary, and that he was known as “the uterus collector.” The nurse’s claims, which she admitted were based on hearsay, were later found to be false.
“In the end, we are left with this: NBC investigated the whistleblower letter’s accusations; that investigation did not corroborate the accusations and even undermined some; NBC republished the letter’s accusations anyway,” Wood wrote in a scathing 108-page ruling on June 26. She ordered a jury trial to determine if MSNBC engaged in “actual malice,” the standard to determine defamation.
The Washington Free Beacon noted: “The discovery process revealed how MSNBC and NBC News journalists and executives acknowledged privately — in text messages, emails, and conference calls — that they didn’t know if the allegations were true, but reported them anyway. The lawsuit could prove embarrassing to MSNBC, which bills itself the “premier destination; for news and ‘informed perspectives.’ ”
Amin sued MSNBC for defamation in September 2021, denying that he had performed any unnecessary medical procedures. A Senate investigation found no evidence the physician had done so and that, contrary to the allegations, two hysterectomies he performed were “deemed medically necessary” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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Trump lawsuit vs ABC to proceed; judge rules MSNBC’s Maddow, Wallace, Hayes lied about Georgia doctor added by Editor Two on July 25, 2024
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