Fox News legal analyst Mercedes Colwin said Sunday that the Trump campaign’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times was “dead on arrival,” and that President Donald Trump had, by his own admission, made it clear the article in question was an opinion piece.
On Fox News’ “Mediabuzz,” host Howard Kurtz asked Colwin about the viability of the Trump campaign’s suit against the newspaper over a 2019 op-ed written by Max Frankel, former executive editor of the Times. The lawsuit, filed last Wednesday, alleged that the article defamed the president by falsely asserting a “quid pro quo” between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia.
“This case is DOA ― dead on arrival,” Colwin said. “When you have a libel case, especially against an op-ed editor, the very nature of an op-ed is that it’s opinion.”
“There’s lots of well-settled law that says when you are expressing an opinion, you are devoid of making a defamatory statement,” she added. “So even when the president said at that press conference ‘Well, they got the opinion wrong,’ by his own admission you’re talking and criticizing an opinion.”
When questioned about the lawsuit during a press briefing Wednesday, Trump said the article was more than an opinion piece.
“If you read it, you’ll see. It’s beyond an opinion. That’s not an opinion. That’s much more than an opinion,” Trump said. “They did a bad thing, and there will be more coming.”
Kurtz also asked why the Trump campaign would want to “open themselves up to depositions, to discovery, on the Russia matter that’s now old news.” Colwin said that it was highly unlikely the case would reach that stage, but if it did, it was a “significant risk.”
The Times plans to fight the suit, and a spokesperson for the paper said Wednesday that the Trump campaign had “turned to the courts to try to punish an opinion writer for having an opinion they find unacceptable.”
Other legal analysts and First Amendment experts have also been critical of the complaint’s merits.
H/T Mediaite