A law bit: Defamation

But now it’s a Rudi Tooti

Law school for non-lawyers

Defamation: slander or libel

Slander: one or more defamatory oral statements

Libel: one or more defamatory written statements or video(s) posted online

The defamation bit

As we all know, the jackass Rudi G. got whacked for defamation of two poll workers in Georgia. Free speech absolutists are bitching about how bad the lawsuit is. That really ticks me off. 

Criticism: Authoritarian regimes police speech and squelch dissent. That is precisely what the defamation lawsuit against Giuliani seeks to accomplish.

A rejection of the criticism: A reasonable characterization of defamation lawsuits is that they are heavily grounded in the law of defamation, which is heavily grounded in what some might consider to be common sense. 

This defamation suit seeks to protect innocent people, not guilty ones, from all kinds of harm inflicted by lies, slanders and other forms of dark free speech. To incur liability for the defamation defendant, the person defamed (plaintiff) must prove in court: 

(1) the defamer publicly made one or more false statements against the defamed person, 

(2) the defamer (a) knows that the statement(s) is/are false and defamatory, or (b) acted (spoke or wrote) in reckless disregard of these matters, or (c) acted negligently in failing to ascertain the facts, and 

(3) the defamed person suffered damages. 

In the case of the two poll workers, the insulting jackass Giuliani caused damages like this:

On 3 December 2020, Giuliani tweeted a selectively edited video</a> that he claimed showed Freeman and Moss wheeling suitcases full of ballots out from under a table after counting had concluded for the night. The accusation was quickly debunked by Georgia officials, but Giuliani continued to spread the lie. He also accused them of “passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine”, when Freeman was passing Moss a ginger mint.

Almost immediately, Freeman and Moss started to receive death threats through the mail, email, social media and voicemail. Many of those racist messages were displayed and played in court this week.

Giuliani refused to turn over documents as part of the case and conceded earlier this year that he made false statements about the women. Howell found him liable of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. The only question for the jury to decide was how much in damages Giuliani should pay.

From the outset, lawyers for Freeman and Moss made it clear that the case was about repairing the reputations of their clients and sending a message to other powerful figures that they could not make similar false claims without consequences. 

“Today’s a good day. A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and held him accountable, and for that I’m thankful,” said Freeman, speaking at the court after the verdict. “Today is not the end of the road, we still have work to do. Rudy Giuliani was not the only one who spread lies about us, and others must be held accountable too. But that is tomorrow’s work. 

“I want people to understand this,” she added. “Money will never solve all my problems. I can never move back into the house that I call home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home, I miss my neighbors, and I miss my name.”  (emphasis added)

Defenses to defamation include the allegedly defamatory statement(s) is/are (1) true, (2) pure opinion, and (3) privileged in some way, e.g., statements made in a court case or in a legislature. 

There is no significant social, political or other kind of benefit or value in defamatory statements. The statements that the unrepentant jackass Giuliani made, caused living hell for the two innocent women he cruelly attacked and defamed without reason, evidence or even any respect for the court or the two women.

Qs: In view of all of that, exactly what are the more than trivial damages to free speech in this defamation lawsuit? Is stopping people from lying about others in ways that causes harm a major burden on free speech?

Rudi needs professional help,

the Kraken would do nicely

Explaining Christian nationalism; A new White MAGA-fomented ethno-nationalist identity

A report in Salon by Senior Writer Amanda Marcotte discusses the transition of many Republicans from mildly sort of Christian to some sort of Christian nationalist as part of a White, MAGA-fomented ethno-nationalist identity:

How Republicans convinced themselves America 

was meant to be a “Christian nation”

Most Republicans now support Christian nationalism. This was not the case during the Obama years

What has genuinely surprised me is the way a bunch of folks who were previously not very religious have become all about Jesus. Maybe not enough to go to church, mind you, but enough to start littering their social media posts and other communications with Bible verses and the sentimental religious imagery. Not too long ago, many of these folks used to mock the showy piety of the fundamentalist neighbors. I fully blame the MAGA movement, of course.

Polling data shows my experience is not unique. Despite the obviously fake Christianity of Trump, this has been an era where most Republicans have abandoned their secular impulses. Instead, being a performative Christian has become an increasingly mandatory part of having a Republican identity. Even for those who never actually go to church.

In 2010, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) polled Republicans about their views on conservative Christianity and the Tea Party movement, which we now can see was a precursor to MAGA. Back then, only 31% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters identified with conservative Christianity. Fast-forward 13 years and the landscape has dramatically shifted. PRRI polling shows that a majority of Republican voters don’t just align themselves with conservative Christianity, but with Christian nationalism. Fifty-four percent of Republicans mostly or completely agree with sentiments such as "Being Christian is an important part of being truly American" and "God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society."

These numbers likely are not the result of millions of Americans suddenly finding Jesus, but about the way that Trump and the MAGA movement have cemented the GOP as an ethno-nationalist party, instead of merely a conservative party. Which is to say, now that they’re a tribe they need ways to define their tribal identity. Religion offers one aspect of that identity. (Whiteness, too, though most will rarely, if ever, so say out loud.) This is why polls show over 40% of self-described "evangelicals" don't even go to church. "Christian" has morphed from a faith tradition to a marker of ethnic/political identity.

How did so many people go from being mildly indifferent to religion to centering Christianity in their self-conception as an American? It certainly wasn’t by accident. This is the result of decades of work by Christian fundamentalists to generate propaganda and disinformation, all to prop up the myth that the U.S. was founded to be a Christian nation. Then Trump came along with his authoritarian "us vs. them" messaging, creating a need for Republicans to define exactly what they mean by "us." Christian nationalists were ready to fill that "us" with their own notions that Christianity is a mandatory part of the American identity.

The central figure in this tale is David Barton, a Christian huckster who has made a name for himself on the right by passing himself off as a "historian." Barton got a bachelor’s in religious education from Oral Roberts University in 1976 and has no academic training in history. His "research" is a joke, to the point where even conservative Christian academics reject his claims.  

Barton’s influence is so vast in the world of Republican thought it’s immeasurable. He’s heavily promoted through right-wing media and consults with major Republican leaders, including the new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. But even people who have never heard his name have likely absorbed his ideas through the right-wing media ecosystem, which is infused with them. When Republicans repeat false talking points, like "separation of church and state is a myth" or "the Founders envisioned a Christian nation," most of that goes straight back to Barton and his fake histories.  

That this all got supercharged under Trump is a little odd, no doubt, because Trump’s “Christianity” is as transparently false as Barton’s historical research. Perversely, however, Trump’s fake faith likely boosted the widespread embrace of an “evangelical” identity by Republican voters who previously weren’t especially religious. By waving around a Bible he doesn’t read and talking up a Jesus he doesn’t believe in, Trump has underscored how much “Christian” is a tribal identity marker more than a faith tradition, at least in the MAGA world.

Marcotte calls it a tribe. I call it a cult. But otherwise her narrative seems generally reasonable.

News bits: Mentally trapped Christian nationalist outburst; Protecting the judge against thugs; Etc.

I found an informative report about a foaming at the mouth Christian nationalist who is self-aware enough to acknowledge that his religion has trapped his mind and forces him to act:

Satanic idol at Iowa State Capitol BEHEADED by Christian veteran

“I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged,” Cassidy said. “My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”

According to The Sentinel, Michael Cassidy pushed over and decapitated the statue of Baphomet, which was placed in the building by members of the Satanic Temple of Iowa after receiving permission, and discarded the head of the statue into the trash.

Very few reports are this explicit about the power of Christian nationalist ideology and dogma to trap minds and cause behavior consonant with beliefs. Some of the behavior is bad, or if people are harmed or could foreseeably be harmed, evil.

Note: I financially support the Satanic Temple (TST). It is a formal religion consisting of a secular group dedicated to forcing religion out of government as much as possible by forcing Satan in wherever Christianity is found in government, mainly govt. buildings and public schools. I’m not sure if TST is active in federal prisons.

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Business Insider reports that judge Engoron needed an armed security force to escort him out of the courthouse after a day in DJT’s civil fraud trial:

Trump fraud-trial judge evacuated from Manhattan 

courthouse soon after testimony ends

• More than 10 weeks of testimony wrapped on Wednesday with a verdict expected in a month.

• Four hours after testimony ended, someone set a small fire outside the judge's robing room.

The person creating the mischief was caught and arrested. The police do not think that this incident had anything to do with the fact that Engoron was the judge on DJT’s fraud trial. I find that not believable. One way or another, that crackpot was motivated by the DJT trial in my opinion.

If DJT is found liable for fraud in this case, the penalties could bankrupt him.

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Salon reports from the Well, Duh! Files:

Paul Ryan goes off on podcast: 

“Trump’s not a conservative — he’s an authoritarian narcissist”

Trump's tendencies are guided by narcissism and "whatever makes him popular," ex-House speaker says

“He doesn’t think in classical liberal-conservative terms. He thinks in an authoritarian way. And he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior,” said Ryan, who has faced criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for not strongly opposing Trump in 2016 or through his presidency.

At least some folks are now woke enough to see that DJT isn't a pro-democracy conservative. Once that miraculous revelation is experienced, the next question one would expect to traverse the woke mind is, if he’s not a conservative, then what is he? Some see God’s chosen defender of the faith. Others see a demagogic liar-grifter dictator. Others see other stuff.

Too bad Paul didn’t see the reality of what DJT was while he still had power. Now that Ryan has nothing to lose he gripes about what DJT is. One could say that by practicing the KYMS tactic about DJT while he had power, Ryan was complicit with lies, corruption and tyranny when it counted the most for DJT.

Paul, an earnest young man,

but too little and too late

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As we all know, DJT wants to delay all of his trials as much as possible. That is his best weapon to deny or at least reduce accountability. One avenue of delay has been for DJT to claim he is immune from whatever he did while in office. To cut that delay tactic off, DoJ Special Counsel jack Smith made an emergency appeal to the USSC to determine whether DJT could be tried for his crimes while in office. Surprisingly, the USSC (i) agreed to hear the appeal, and (ii) granted Smith’s request to decide real soon, like in the next 10-14 days or thereabouts. 

That amounts to the court acting faster than light. It is ludicrous speed for a federal court.

As usual, DJT’s court filing in opposition to deciding the immunity issue is full of desperation, nonsense and blatant lies. The facts are all against him. Lies and desperation is all he has in his defense. Here is an example:

The prosecution has one goal in this case: To unlawfully attempt to try, convict, and sentence President Trump before an election in which he is likely to defeat President Biden. This represents a blatant attempt to interfere with the 2024 presidential election and to disenfranchise the tens of millions of voters who support President Trump’s candidacy.

While pursuing this partisan goal, the prosecution waited over two years to bring this lawless case, and then sought an extraordinarily expedited trial calendar, demanding that jury selection begin in December 2023—notwithstanding nearly 13 million pages of discovery and a litany of important and unresolved legal issues. D.Ct. Doc. 23, at 2. In support, the prosecution made the same argument it makes now—that violating President Trump’s due process rights would somehow “vindicate” the public’s interest in a speedy trial.

The prosecution was wrong then, and it is wrong now. This appeal presents novel, complex, and sensitive questions of profound importance. Whether a President of the United States may be criminally prosecuted for his official acts as President goes to the core of our system of separated powers and will stand among the most consequential questions ever decided by this Court. The manifest public interest lies in the Court’s careful and deliberate consideration of these momentous issues with the utmost care and diligence. 

A peanut gallery commenter said what all of us are thinking: The argument to delay is absurd but this is the most insane SCOTUS ever assembled, so what do you think the chances are that they’ll buy his argument and delay? Their true motive - to delay past the election - is abundantly clear. There’s no legitimate reason for a defendant to want to delay a decision that could exonerate them of multiple federal charges.

A response to that was this: This SCOTUS is insane, but they are predominately Federalist Society Republicans. Trump came to power in a hostile takeover of the Republican party. The country club set might want their party back. Also, the court wants to maximize the power of the court within government. Granting immunity to Trump doesn’t accomplish that. He’s done what they wanted in the past, but that might not outweigh other considerations here.

Good ’ole peanut gallery!

What ludicrous speed looks like

News chunks: Elite DJT supporter calls for execution of non-Christians; The authoritarian lie about abortion

Raw Story reports about a cruel figure in the brutal kleptocratic dictatorship called Trumplandia: 

White supremacist who dined with Trump 

calls for ‘death penalty’ for non-Christians

.... [Nick] Fuentes is a white supremacist, Christian nationalist, anti-LGBTQ, authoritarian extremist who supports Trump’s “America First” doctrine.

In his livestream show on Sunday titled, “The Great Replacement is about White GENOCIDE,” Fuentes called for the “death penalty” for non-Christians, according to Right Wing Watch (video below). “Antisemitic white nationalist Christian fascist Nick Fuentes says that when his America First movement takes power, all non-Christians will be executed,” RWW reported.

Nick F, a hyper-arrogant 

pro-mass murdering Christofascist

and loyal DJT supporter

“There is an occult element at the high levels of society [yes, it's called Christian nationalism], and specifically among the Jews, and you know, whenever I see that stuff that just makes me want to proclaim louder and more firmly and more rigidly that it is nothing other than Jesus Christ. No, no pagan stuff, no false gods, no deities, no demons. It is Jesus Christ and we need to start saying that name,” Fuentes said.

“It’s the name Jesus, talk about it, say it. Pray to Him, talk about the sacrifice on the cross, that’s the answer. Because so many of the people that are perpetrating the lies and the destruction on the country, they are evil doers. They are people that worship false gods, they are people that practice magic or rituals or whatever, and more than anything those people need to be, when we take power, they need to be given the death penalty. Straight up. And, I’m far more concerned about that than I am about even non-white people or mass migration.”

“These people that are that are communing with demons and engaging in this sort of witchcraft and stuff, and these people that are suppressing the name Christ and suppressing Christianity, they must be absolutely annihilated when we take power, I’m not calling for political violence, but that cannot have any quarter in our society.” 

“We need to put up a crucifix in every home, in every room in every school and every government office to signal Christ’s reign over our country,” Fuentes declared. “Not that God needs it, but it must be outwardly expressed from the interior, that this is God's country. This is Jesus’s country. This is not the domain of atheists or devil worshipers or perfidious Jews. This is Christ's country,” he said, adding those who are “agnostic” cannot be part of his “America First” movement. “No, you must be a Christian. And you must submit to Christianity.” 

An outspoken admirer of fascists such as Mussolini, Fuentes emerged as an influential figure on the national stage during the now-infamous ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, which relied on misinformation [lots of lies and slanders] to falsely claim that Donald Trump had won the 2020 election and sought to overturn the results of it.

Stinking agnostics. Worse atheists. Jews? -- just kill ’em. Go get ’em Nick! MAGA!!

Qs: 

1. How is it possible to not call for violence while simultaneously calling for absolute annihilation and the death penalty for non-Christians? (Hint: It’s not possible, except in the enraged, self-righteous minds of traitors, liars and crackpots) 

2. Notice the bigotry and intolerance inherent in Christian nationalism? (I see it, even if some Christian nationalists are more less bigoted and more tolerant than Nick)

3. Can one reasonably argue that the concept of Satan lives in the minds of some humans and controls their perceptions, thinking and behavior? (I can) 

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Slate writes about the sad, terrifying saga of Kate Cox, the unfortunate woman the cruel, blatantly dictatorial radical right Republican Party in Texas wanted to force her to do against her will and at threat to her life. Kate had to flee Texas to get an abortion before her pregnancy might have killed her. This is what life under a Republican Party dictatorship looks like. The Texas dictatorship will get worse as the rigid dogma of dictatorship poison flows and continues to exert increasing control over everyday life in Texas.

Who Determines Kate Cox’s Health Care

In a post-Roe world, it is judges [in red states] who get to decide what a pregnant person must do with even a nonviable pregnancy

Kate Cox: Seriously oppressed by the 

dictatorial Texas GOP

Here is a partial list of the not-medically-trained people who made the medical determination that terminating Kate Cox’s 20-plus-week-old pregnancy would not fall under an approved exception to Texas’ three overlapping abortion bans. Not one of these people, mind you, knows anything about pregnancy, medicine, or Kate Cox’s life, they each just decided that because she did not suffer from “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced,” she could not access an abortion, despite the fact that her fetus did receive, from a physician, a diagnosis incompatible with life. The list of people with the moral certainty and medical acumen to restrict this woman’s access to the health care that would in fact preserve her fertility are:

• Ken Paxton, Texas’ nearly impeached attorney general, who appealed a lower court order granting Cox permission to terminate her pregnancy, which she had received following a diagnosis of trisomy 18, a genetic anomaly that virtually always results in miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death, and frequently causes severe physical pain for the mother and may impair her efforts to bear future children. Add to the list Paxton’s crack team of lawyers who argue—as ace physicians—that Cox should just have had her abortion in Florida if she wants one so badly, then threatened to prosecute her physician and any hospital which aided Cox in Texas despite the existence of a court order specifically shielding them from prosecution.

• All nine justices of the Texas Supreme Court, who unanimously determined on Monday in a nine-page opinion that while “no one disputes that Ms. Cox’s pregnancy has been extremely complicated,” the problem was that when Ms. Cox’s physician expressed a “good faith belief” that her condition met the legal standard for an exception, this was not a sufficient quantum of legal certainty upon which to predicate a medical judgment. While noting in their opinion that “a pregnant woman does not need a court order to have a life-saving abortion in Texas,” the great minds of the court determined that Ms. Cox could not receive a life-saving abortion in Texas without a court order.

• Among those nine eminent medical experts, one must single out Justice John Devine, a radical Christian fundamentalist who has bragged of being arrested 37 times for protesting at abortion clinics. His election campaign included a video depicting his wife’s decision to continue a high-risk pregnancy (her seventh), which was said to likely end in the deaths of both mother and child. The mother lived. The child lived for an hour.

• Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the majority opinion in Dobbs in such a way as to arrogate vast medical authority to himself, his colleagues, eminent historical medical experts such as Sir Matthew Hale (M.D. ostensibly received from Witch Burner College sometime in the 17th century), and amicus brief spider monkey Robert George. While it’s true that Alito neither knew nor cared about women’s medical needs in his Dobbs opinion, it’s also true that without the Dobbs opinion, the Texas Supreme Court and Ken Paxton wouldn’t be telling Katie Cox that she is, in effect, an ambulatory coffin for the duration of her pregnancy, because government was getting itself out of the abortion-regulation business.

So here we are. It’s 2023 and Texas has elected an all-Republican Supreme Court that is now asserting in a written opinion that the judiciary shouldn’t be deciding reproductive rights questions because such questions should be left to medical experts, at the exact same time that it is second-guessing a real, live medical expert and granting to itself the sole power to decide which acute medical conditions are life-threatening and which are just jolly good fun. It’s 2023, and Ken Paxton is accusing the pregnant mother of two children, who desperately wants more children, of being untruthful with the courts, while he terrorizes her physician and the hospitals at which she has admitting privileges. What is “substantial impairment of a major bodily function” if not the impairment of future childbirth? The only way Kate Cox can persuade a bunch of elected judges and lawyers (who have never met her and don’t care about her health or her reproductive future) that she should be allowed to end an excruciating, doomed pregnancy is by either: 1) dying; or 2) having a physician certify that she will die without treatment. And this macabre pretzel is what we are advised is definitionally “pro-life.”

One can only wonder why majorities of rank and file Texas voters want to live under a brutal, radical right Republican Party dictatorship. Maybe they like to think for themselves by being told what to do by radical dictators and their radical supporters in power.

Republican Party “reasoning”