The longtime personal lawyer for President Donald Trump has filed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed for publishing an unverified dossier of allegations about Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief has said he was ‘proud’ for publishing the dossier.
The lawyer Michael Cohen, filed the lawsuit in a New York state court Tuesday, nearly a year after BuzzFeed published the dossier commissioned by political opposition research firm Fusion GPS.
Cohen, who is named in the dossier, said BuzzFeed and several of its staffers defamed him by publishing the 35-page document, which contained a mix of truths, falsehoods and unverified rumors about interactions between people close to Trump and Russian figures.
The lawsuit says that BuzzFeed published the unverified allegations “without attempting to determine the veracity of these reports with plaintiff himself.”
That included a claim that Cohen had traveled to Prague for secret meetings with a Russian official. Cohen said he has never been to Prague and his passport shows no visits to the Czech Republic.
“Enough is enough of the #fake #RussianDossier,” Cohen wrote on Twitter. “Just filed a defamation action against @BuzzFeedNews for publishing the lie filled document on @POTUS @realDonaldTrump and me!”
When it published the dossier, Buzzfeed noted it contained allegations that were unverified and had some “clear errors.” BuzzFeed said it was nevertheless publishing the document “so that Americans can make up their own minds” about the allegations against Trump.
Cohen also filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday against Fusion GPS, saying the political opposition reports it prepared included “immensely damaging and defamatory statements.”
He faulted the company for recklessly distributing the dossier and allowing it to “fall into the hands of media devoted to breaking news on the hottest subject of the day: the Trump candidacy.”
Josh Levy, a lawyer for Fusion, declined to comment Wednesday morning.
BuzzFeed spokesman Matt Mittenthal defended the publication of the dossier and added, “we look forward to defending our First Amendment rights in court.”
In an opinion column published in The New York Times, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said he was proud of the decision to publish the dossier, saying Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election has become the “central challenge to Mr. Trump’s presidency.”
“The dossier is unquestionably real news,” he wrote.
Smith argues that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election has become the “central challenge to Mr. Trump’s presidency.” He says publishing the dossier last year was in the “public interest.”
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has released a transcript from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s August interview with a co-founder of Fusion GPS, the political opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier.
After that release Tuesday, a Trump lawyer filed lawsuits against BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS for damaging and inflammatory statements.
Enough is enough of the #fake #RussianDossier. Just filed a defamation action against @BuzzFeedNews for publishing the lie filled document on @POTUS @realDonaldTrump and me!
— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) January 10, 2018
Our response to the reported defamation lawsuit by Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen: pic.twitter.com/ybSI8kWQvS
— Matt Mittenthal (@mattmittenthal) January 10, 2018
(AP)
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2 Responses
My question would be whether BuzzFeed gave those who were defamed in the release timely and adequate opportunity (on its website) to rebut and refute the defamation? My opinion is that a claim of allegedly allowing the public to judge for itself has no meaning (and is indeed a devious claim) if the opposing view is not presented.
As a note, the way these type of lawsuits work in the United States is that several levels of verdicts are required. One level requires deciding whether some claim is actually true or false. Another level requires a separate verdict whether the claim, even if false, is actually defamatory. Money (or damages) is a separate verdict. Thus the first objective of the lawsuit is is to obtain a judicial verdict that the assertions in the release are indeed false. After that verdict, anyone repeating the allegations afterwards would indeed be subject to serious whacking by the courts.