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Tag: defamation

  • Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Bad Mouth Virtual K-Pop Stars on Social Media

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    KPop Demon Hunters has dominated streaming and the box office this summer, but KPop Defamation Hunters landed a win in a different venue: the South Korean courts. The South Korean virtual boy band Plave, which is made up of five members who only ever appear as animations, successfully sued a person who made derogatory comments about the group online.

    According to the BBC, the unidentified social media user made a series of insulting posts about the band in July 2024. Among the attacks: he suggested the people behind the virtual band members “could be ugly in real life” and said they gave off a “typical Korean man vibe.” Some of the posts also included profanity, which doesn’t seem that offensive, but neither do the posts, so it’s probably worth mentioning.

    The person who made the posts attempted to argue that the comments were directed at the avatars that front the group and not the real people lending their voices to the virtual band members. The court didn’t buy it and declared that the avatars represent someone real, so the attacks extend beyond the virtual fronts to the people behind them.

    The victory landed Plave 500,000 South Korean won in total, 100,000 per band member, which works out to just over $70 a pop. Not exactly a fortune for a group that already has more than one million subscribers on YouTube, sold more than 500,000 units of their most recent album in the first week, and performs concerts that attract tens of thousands of fans. It’s also much less than the band asked for. They were seeking 6.5 million won for each performer, which would have worked out to about $4,650 per member and $23,250 total. The band claimed that the comments caused emotional stress for the group.

    Vlast, the band’s label, intends to appeal the damages granted by the court, according to the BBC, arguing that it is too low for a case that sets a precedent for defamation against virtual avatars. While it does seem like the ruling is the first instance of defamation against virtual pop stars, it’s not uncommon for Korean music labels to pursue charges against internet trolls. Several labels in the country have made a concerted effort to go after people who badmouth acts online. The virtual band trend, to some extent, is considered a response to the type of attention and pressure that pop stars receive in Korea.

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    AJ Dellinger

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  • Trump’s Frivolous Times Lawsuit Wasn’t Supposed to Succeed

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    President Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One on September 18, 2025.
    Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

    Nobody who has come within shouting distance of law school was surprised when Florida-based U.S. District Court judge Steven Merryday dismissed
    Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times. It was widely panned as meritless the moment he filed it. But the contempt of the judge for Trump’s waste of everyone’s time was remarkable, notes CBS News:

    In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Steven Merryday said the original 85-page complaint was “decidedly improper and impermissible” and went well beyond Rule 8 of federal rules of civil procedure, which requires that each allegation be “simple, concise and direct.” …

    “Even under the most generous and lenient applications of Rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible,” Merryday wrote. “… The reader must endure an allegation of ‘the desperate need to defame with a partisan spear rather than report with an authentic looking glass’ and an allegation that ‘the false narrative about The Apprentice was just the tip of defendants’ melting iceberg of falsehoods.’”

    NBC News has another hostile comment from the ruling:

    “As every lawyer knows (or is presumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary,” wrote Merryday.

    Merryday is decidedly not one of those “radical left judges” the White House loves to bash. He was appointed to the federal bench by George H.W. Bush and is best known for striking down the CDC’s ban on cruise-ship operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. But he knows a frivolous lawsuit when he sees one. And he basically ordered Trump’s lawyers to cut the crap if they wanted any hearing on a defamation suit against the Times.

    The timing of this angry rejection of the president’s assault on the Times’ First Amendment rights to cover his administration is interesting, to put it mildly. Trump, his vice-president, his attorney general, and many of his supporters are engaged in a systemic effort to restrict or inhibit free speech if the content of that speech displeases them or offers opportunities to smear or demonize their opponents. But the suit itself, idiotic as it was, also illustrates an important point about how Trump goes about intimidating his foes and getting his way. He understands that getting his way indirectly through public pressure and private threats is legally safer and more effective than the direct use of government power to silence pesky critics and persistent reporters. The operation to shut down Jimmy Kimmel for his comments about politicization of the Charlie Kirk assassination was textbook Trump. His FCC chairman didn’t try to directly sanction Kimmel or ABC; he complained about Kimmel on a right-wing podcast and then after an intense MAGA social-media campaign network affiliates vowed to take his show off the air, leading ABC to suspend it indefinitely. It’s a two-cushion shot providing the administration with plausible deniability.

    Similarly Trump’s lawsuit against the Times was never intended to succeed in court; it didn’t even make a token effort to demonstrate the newspaper told conscious untruths with “actual malice,” the First Amendment standard for defamation suits by public figures. But by putting the broad accusation and a vast claim of damages out there, Team Trump hoped to rouse supporters to take their own actions against the Times, to put the Times on notice that worse things are to come, and perhaps to pave the way for the sort of shakedowns the president has deftly executed against CBS and ABC.

    Beyond that, the Times lawsuit was a reminder that the president has for many years earned a reputation as the king of frivolous lawsuits. Back in 2016 when he was first running for president, USA Today did an inventory of lawsuits filed by Trump and his businesses and identified 4,095 of them. In a 2020 book on Trump’s incredibly long and active history of litigation, former prosecutor James D. Zirin captures his M.O. succinctly:

    Trump learned how to use the law from his mentor, notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. Trump took Cohn’s scorched-earth strategy to heart.

    “Trump saw litigation as being only about winning,” Zirin writes. “He sued at the drop of a hat. He sued for sport; he sued to achieve control; and he sued to make a point. He sued as a means of destroying or silencing those who crossed him. He became a plaintiff in chief.”

    It was a source of bitter amusement in the legal community when Trump framed his aggressive 2025 shakedown of white-shoe law firms for free legal work as an attack on “frivolous lawsuits.” It was an incredible example of a pot calling the kettle black.

    So the president won’t be the least bit deterred or dismayed by the dismissal of his giant suit against the Times or by the mockery it invited. This is who he is and what he does.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Former top San Mateo sheriff’s aide files federal civil rights lawsuit against county

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    Victor Aenlle, the former chief of staff to Sheriff Christina Corpus — who faces multiple efforts to remove her from office — has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against San Mateo County, County Executive Officer Michael Callagy and other top officials. The suit alleges “retaliation, wrongful termination, defamation, and abuse of power.”

    The lawsuit, announced Thursday by his attorneys at the Fellner Law Group in San Francisco, claims county officials “illegally targeted and fired Aenlle” last year for supporting Corpus, the county’s first Latina sheriff.

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    Ryan Macasero

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  • Trump Sues New York Times for $15B Defamation

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    The president is seeking $15 billion from the publication for libel and defamation

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump attends a campaign event on April 02

    President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Monday to announce that he has filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times. 

    Trump wrote, “Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual “mouthpiece” for the Radical Left Democrat Party.” 

    This announcement comes shortly after The New York Times reported on a note with an explicit drawing for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, with a signature that looks a lot like President Trump’s. The publication published articles on how the signature resembles the President’s, while Trump has been steadfastly denying. The note came out in a batch of Epstein-related materials by the House Oversight Committee. 

    Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for The New York Times, responded in a statement published Wednesday: “Our journalists reported the facts, provided the visual evidence and printed the president’s denial. It’s all there for the American people to see and to make up their own minds about. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.” 

    In the past, Trump has gone to court with a number of other news outlets and publications. Like the multi-billion dollar settlements he has done in the past against Disney’s ABC, and Paramount’s CBS networks. 

    “I am PROUD to hold this once respected “rag” responsible,” Trump said in the same Truth Social post, referring to the Times. 

    This would not be the first time the President and The New York Times have had a run in. In the past Trump would criticize the publications’ coverage, for their ‘biased’ reporting on his administration and family business relations. 

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    Tara Nguyen

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  • Long Island law firm sues Project Veritas over legal fees | Long Island Business News

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    Lake Success-based has filed a against the right-wing for stiffing the law firm for payment of . 

    The lawsuit filed in Nassau County State Supreme Court on Wednesday claims that Mamaroneck-based Project Veritas has not paid for legal services rendered by the firm and that the client has yet to make any payments on a balance due of $103,672.03. 

    The complaint asserts that between Jan. 5, 2021 and Sept. 19, 2023, Abrams Fensterman worked on a number of cases on behalf of Project Veritas, including a lawsuit the nonprofit lodged against The in 2020, after the newspaper described some videos from Project Veritas as part of a “coordinated disinformation effort.” The suit was withdrawn in July 2025. 

    In the lawsuit filed by Abrams Fensterman, the firm stated that the amount owed by Project Veritas is “above the threshold amount” for arbitration, so it had to sue for the money instead. 

    Attorney , who filed the lawsuit on behalf of her firm, has yet to respond to a request for comment. 

    Project Veritas could not be reached for comment. 

    Founded by in 2010, Project Veritas is described in published reports as a far-right activist group, which targeted main-stream media outlets and progressive organizations. In the exposé published by the Times in 2020, for which Project Veritas sued for defamation, the newspaper chronicled the group’s use of undercover operatives to infiltrate “Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda.” 

    Project Veritas suspended its operations “amidst severe financial woes,” in Sept. 2023, according to Mediaite.com. 

    Headquartered in Lake Success, Abrams Fensterman also has offices in Brooklyn, White Plains, Albany and Rochester, according to its website. 


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    David Winzelberg

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  • Giuliani appears in NYC court after missing deadline to surrender assets

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    A combative Rudy Giuliani said a civil case to take his most prized assets was like “a political persecution” before he entered a New York City courthouse Thursday to explain to a federal judge why he hasn’t surrendered his valuables as part of a $148 million defamation judgment.Judge Lewis Liman ordered the former New York City mayor to report to court after lawyers for the two former Georgia election workers who were awarded the massive judgment visited Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment last week only to discover it had been cleared out weeks earlier.The judge had set an Oct. 29 deadline for the longtime ally of once-and-future President Donald Trump to surrender many of his possessions to lawyers for Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.The possessions include his $5 million Upper East Side apartment, a 1980 Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall, a shirt signed by New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio, dozens of luxury watches and other valuables.When he arrived at Manhattan federal court, Giuliani told reporters that he has not stood in the way of the court’s orders.“Every bit of property that they want is available, if they are entitled to it,” he said. “Now, the law says they’re not entitled to a lot of them. For example, they want my grandfather’s watch, which is 150 years old. That’s a bit of an heirloom. Usually you don’t get those unless you’re involved in a political persecution. In fact, having me here today is like a political persecution.”During the court proceeding, which lasted over an hour, a lawyer for Freeman and Moss and a lawyer for Giuliani disputed whether Giuliani has done all he can to turn over assets.Liman ordered Giuliani to hand over the Mercedes by Monday.Liman originally scheduled a phone conference about the situation, but he changed it to a hearing in Manhattan federal court that Giuliani must attend after learning about the visit to the former mayor’s apartment.Aaron Nathan, an attorney for the election workers, wrote in a letter to Liman that the residence was already “substantially empty” when representatives for his clients visited with a moving company official to assess the transportation and storage needs for the property Giuliani was ordered to surrender.He said the group was told most of the apartment’s contents, including art, sports memorabilia and other valuables, had been moved out about four weeks prior and that some of it had been placed in storage on Long Island.At the hearing, Nathan complained that efforts to get assets were met by “delay and then evasion.”Giuliani spoke directly to the judge at one point, saying he’d been “treated rudely” by those trying to take control of his assets.They have so far argued unsuccessfully that Giuliani should not be forced to turn over his belongings while he appeals the judgment.Liman also denied a request from Giuliani’s legal team to postpone Thursday’s court appearance to next week or hold it by phone, as originally planned.A Giuliani spokesperson, meanwhile, dismissed the legal wrangling as intimidation tactics.“Opposing counsel, acting either negligently or deliberately in a deceptive manner, are simply attempting to further bully and intimidate Mayor Giuliani until he is rendered penniless and homeless,” Ted Goodman, his spokesperson, said earlier this week.Giuliani was found liable for defamation for falsely accusing Freeman and Moss of ballot fraud as he pushed Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud allegations during the 2020 campaign.The women said they faced death threats after Giuliani accused the two of sneaking in ballots in suitcases, counting ballots multiple times and tampering with voting machines.

    NEW YORK —

    A combative Rudy Giuliani said a civil case to take his most prized assets was like “a political persecution” before he entered a New York City courthouse Thursday to explain to a federal judge why he hasn’t surrendered his valuables as part of a $148 million defamation judgment.

    Judge Lewis Liman ordered the former New York City mayor to report to court after lawyers for the two former Georgia election workers who were awarded the massive judgment visited Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment last week only to discover it had been cleared out weeks earlier.

    The judge had set an Oct. 29 deadline for the longtime ally of once-and-future President Donald Trump to surrender many of his possessions to lawyers for Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.

    The possessions include his $5 million Upper East Side apartment, a 1980 Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall, a shirt signed by New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio, dozens of luxury watches and other valuables.

    When he arrived at Manhattan federal court, Giuliani told reporters that he has not stood in the way of the court’s orders.

    “Every bit of property that they want is available, if they are entitled to it,” he said. “Now, the law says they’re not entitled to a lot of them. For example, they want my grandfather’s watch, which is 150 years old. That’s a bit of an heirloom. Usually you don’t get those unless you’re involved in a political persecution. In fact, having me here today is like a political persecution.”

    During the court proceeding, which lasted over an hour, a lawyer for Freeman and Moss and a lawyer for Giuliani disputed whether Giuliani has done all he can to turn over assets.

    Liman ordered Giuliani to hand over the Mercedes by Monday.

    Liman originally scheduled a phone conference about the situation, but he changed it to a hearing in Manhattan federal court that Giuliani must attend after learning about the visit to the former mayor’s apartment.

    Aaron Nathan, an attorney for the election workers, wrote in a letter to Liman that the residence was already “substantially empty” when representatives for his clients visited with a moving company official to assess the transportation and storage needs for the property Giuliani was ordered to surrender.

    He said the group was told most of the apartment’s contents, including art, sports memorabilia and other valuables, had been moved out about four weeks prior and that some of it had been placed in storage on Long Island.

    At the hearing, Nathan complained that efforts to get assets were met by “delay and then evasion.”

    Giuliani spoke directly to the judge at one point, saying he’d been “treated rudely” by those trying to take control of his assets.

    They have so far argued unsuccessfully that Giuliani should not be forced to turn over his belongings while he appeals the judgment.

    Liman also denied a request from Giuliani’s legal team to postpone Thursday’s court appearance to next week or hold it by phone, as originally planned.

    A Giuliani spokesperson, meanwhile, dismissed the legal wrangling as intimidation tactics.

    “Opposing counsel, acting either negligently or deliberately in a deceptive manner, are simply attempting to further bully and intimidate Mayor Giuliani until he is rendered penniless and homeless,” Ted Goodman, his spokesperson, said earlier this week.

    Giuliani was found liable for defamation for falsely accusing Freeman and Moss of ballot fraud as he pushed Trump’s unsubstantiated election fraud allegations during the 2020 campaign.

    The women said they faced death threats after Giuliani accused the two of sneaking in ballots in suitcases, counting ballots multiple times and tampering with voting machines.

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  • Man Falsely Blamed for Mass Shooting in Kansas City Sues Congressman Over Tweet

    Man Falsely Blamed for Mass Shooting in Kansas City Sues Congressman Over Tweet

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    A man from suburban Kansas City was falsely accused in social media posts of being a mass shooter at the Super Bowl parade for the Kansas City Chiefs last month. And now that man has filed a defamation lawsuit against Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, who helped spread the inaccurate claim, according to KCTV.

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    Burchett shared a photo of Denton Loudermill on X, with the caption, “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”

    Aside from falsely implicating Loudermill in the shooting on Feb. 14, Burchett also called him an “illegal alien,” another statement that simply wasn’t true. The mass shooting killed one person and wounded 22 others, including 11 children. Three people—23-year-old Lyndell Mays, 18-year-old Dominic Miller, and 20-year-old Terry Young—have been charged in the shooting.

    Loudermill was just trying to leave the parade area after the chaos of the shooting and tried to duck under some police tape, according to his lawsuit. Loudermill, who wasn’t charged or cited for anything, was only briefly detained, but photos of him in handcuffs started to circulate online with a sinister narrative.

    Five days after his original tweet, Rep. Burchett deleted it, blaming “incorrect news reports” as the source of his information. But he didn’t retract the claim that Loudermill was one of the shooters.

    “It has come to my attention that in one of my previous posts, one of the shooters was identified as an illegal alien. This was based on multiple, incorrect news reports stating that. I have removed the post,” Burchett tweeted.

    Burchett blamed “news reports,” but there wasn’t a single reputable news outlet that claimed the man in that photo was an illegal alien nor someone who’d been arrested for perpetrating the shooting. It was all bullshit being peddled by far-right X accounts like End Wokeness, an anonymous account popular with X’s owner Elon Musk.

    Screenshot: X

    Burchett appears to have gotten his “news” from X accounts that have no problem with spreading false information that fits with their narrative.

    In fact, many X accounts used photos of Denton Loudermill while falsely claiming he was someone named “Sahil Omar,” a name that’s been used previously by right-wing trolls to insist all mass shooters must be foreign-born. The fictional “Sahile Omar” has been blamed for other crimes, including mass shootings in Las Vegas and Prague, according to the BBC.

    Loudermill’s lawsuit is seeking $75,000 in damages from Burchett, according to KCTV, though it’s not yet clear if he’s going to sue others who helped spread the false claims on social media.

    “The false identification of Plaintiff as an ‘illegal alien’ and ‘shooter’ has caused [Loudermill] in Kansas to receive death threats and to suffer mental distress from having been exposed to public view and more specifically to experience periods of anxiety, agitation, and sleep disruption and such damages are likely to continue into the future,” the lawsuit states, according to KCTV.

    “The acts and conduct of Defendant caused Plaintiff to suffer injuries and actual damages including mental distress, sleeplessness, anxiety, and agitation…as well as emotional suffering, humiliation, embarrassment, insult, and inconvenience.”

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    Matt Novak

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  • Trump Resumes His Costly Defamation of E. Jean Carroll

    Trump Resumes His Costly Defamation of E. Jean Carroll

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    Trump’s lawsuit-seeking lips were again moving at a rally in Georgia on Saturday night.
    Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    On January 26, a jury in New York ordered Donald Trump to pay more than $83 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll as punishment for repeatedly defaming her. Another jury had sided with Carroll in May and found Trump liable for both sexual assaulting and defaming her, awarding her $5 million in damages. But the former president continued to call Carroll a liar afterward, and so she sued Trump for defamation again, and won in court again. This time, the judgment included a whopping $65 million in punitive damages, which was meant to deter Trump from repeating his false claims about Carroll. That deterrent only remained effective for 43 days.

    On Saturday — one day after he tried to post a $91 million bond in order to prevent Carroll’s attorneys from seizing his assets while he appeals the verdict — Trump resumed defaming Carroll.

    Noting the bond at campaign rally in Rome, Georgia, Trump once again called Carroll a liar:

    I just posted a $91 million bond, $91 million on a fake story, totally made-up story. $91 million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her. She wrote a book, she said things. And when I denied it, I said, “It’s so crazy. It’s false.” I get sued for defamation. That’s where it starts.

    (He actually hasn’t posted the bond yet, his lawyers have requested he be allowed to.)

    Trump also briefly referenced Carroll at a rally in Michigan last month, vaguely implying he did not know her.

    Though Carrol’s attorneys have not yet commented on Trump’s weekend remarks, Carroll has made it clear she would another lawsuit if he defamed her again. Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, has said that “all options are on the table” regarding additional lawsuits. Another Carroll attorney, Shawn Crowley, said in an interview last month that they were watching and listening, waiting to see whether Trump would start up again.

    They didn’t have to wait very long.

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    Chas Danner

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  • Read: Donald Trump court file shows he owes E. Jean Carroll $83 million

    Read: Donald Trump court file shows he owes E. Jean Carroll $83 million

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    Donald Trump has been ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in compensation and damages after a New York jury on Friday found that he had defamed her again in a second civil case.

    In an earlier case, a separate jury concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll in a Manhattan department store during the 1990s, then defamed her character when she went public with the accusation. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages, but the former president described the verdict as part of “the greatest witch hunt of all time.” Trump continued to criticize Carroll publicly, after which the New York writer launched a second defamation case initially seeking an additional $10 million.

    On Friday, Trump was instructed to pay Carroll an additional $18.3 million in compensation along, with $65 million in punitive damages. Reacting to the judgment on X, formerly Twitter, Carroll shared a New York Times article about her victory and wrote: “ELATION!!!!”

    Trump expressed his anger at the court’s decision on his Truth Social website, posting: “Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party.” He added: “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”

    The full court judgement can be read below:

    The two-page court judgment shows that the jury concluded Carroll “suffered more than nominal damages” from defamatory statements Trump made on June 21 to 22, 2019. The jury awarded $11 million “for the reputation repair program only” and an additional $7.3 million in damages “other than for the reputation repair program.”

    The jury also found that when making his comments Trump “acted maliciously, out of hatred, ill will, or spite, vindictively, or in wanton, reckless, or willful disregard for of Ms. Carroll’s rights,” for which he was ordered to pay $65 million in punitive damages.

    Alina Habba, Trump’s attorney, was asked whether she had “second thoughts about representing” the former president as she left the courthouse.

    Habba said: “No. No. I’m glad you asked me that question. No, I’m not having any second thoughts about representing President Trump. It is the proudest thing I could ever do.

    “I have not spoken because I respect my ethics while I’m on trial,” Habba added. “But let me now speak now about what has happened. I have sat on trial after trial for months in this state, the State of New York, Attorney General Letitia James and now this. Why? Because President Trump is leading in the polls and now we see what you get in New York.”

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaving Trump Tower for Manhattan federal court to attend his defamation trial in New York on January 26, 2024. The 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner was ordered to pay an additional…


    CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/GETTY

    U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan clashed repeatedly with Habba during the trial, at one point threatening to send her to jail if she didn’t sit down.

    Trump could be banned for life from the New York retail-estate industry after a judge concluded he engaged in fraud by exaggerating the value of his assets to secure more favorable bank loans and tax arrangements. He strongly denies any wrongdoing.

    The 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner is also facing charges in four separate cases over allegations he orchestrated the payment of hush money to a pornographic actress; mishandled classified documents; and broke the law attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, both nationwide and in the state of Georgia specifically. He has pled not guilty to all counts and insists the cases against him are politically motivated.