A federal appeals court panel affirmed Tuesday's dismissal of President Donald Trump's $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN for using the term “big lie,” calling the president's claims “unpersuasive” and “baseless.”
“Trump has failed to adequately assert the falsity of CNN's statements. Consequently, he has failed to assert a defamation claim,” Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Adalberto Jordan, Kevin Newsom and Elizabeth L. Branch wrote in their brief.
eight page documentation. “Trump's other arguments are also baseless.”
The term “big lie” refers to Trump's statements.
debunked claims of widespread election fraud this allegedly denied him a second term in the White House in 2020. When he sued the network in 2022, Trump said CNN's use of the term was part of a “campaign of dissent in the form of slander and libel.”
He also accused CNN of using “big lies” to create a “false and inflammatory association” between him and Adolf Hitler, who
originally coined the term V
My fight. But the lower court ruled that “bad rhetoric is not libel unless it includes false statements of fact.”
A panel of appeals court judges ruled that Trump's argument was “unpersuasive” because the term “big lie” does not constitute a statement of fact. “This assumption is untenable,” the judges wrote.
“Trump's argument rests on the fact that his own interpretation of his conduct – that he was exercising his constitutional right to express his concerns about the integrity of the election – is correct, and CNN's interpretation – that Trump was promoting his 'big lie' – is false. However, his conduct is subject to a variety of subjective interpretations, including by CNN,” the judges wrote.
“We conclude that by using the word 'big lie' to describe Trump, CNN was not publishing a false statement of facts. Therefore, whether CNN used the word 'big lie' once or multiple times is irrelevant to the lie question,” they added.
It's the latest in Trump's failed lawsuits against a media company covering his lies. In September, a federal judge
fired $15 billion presidential defamation lawsuit against
New York Timessaying it was filled with “tedious and burdensome” language that had nothing to do with the case itself.
Trump sued in July
Wall Street Journal over Trump's reported relationship with alleged human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. This lawsuit was filed shortly after the Trump administration won
$16 million settlement from Paramount for allegedly “deceptively” edited
60 minutes interview with failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
This story has been updated.
