ORLANDO, Fla. (Legal Newsline) – CNN is accused of defamation for reporting that a GOP operative hired to further the Presidential campaign of rapper Kanye West had pleaded guilty to voter registration fraud.
Mark Jacoby filed his lawsuit in Florida federal court on Oct. 9 against CNN and political correspondent Sara Murray, who wrote the Sept. 4 article at issue. The suit says Murray knew Jacoby never pleaded guilty but reported it anyway.
“To sustain her false line of attack on West, Murray needed readers to accept the defamatory statement that Jacoby had pleaded guilty to fraud in conducting similar work in the past. Murray, her editors and her counsel all knew that she was wrong,” the suit says.
“CNN published the defamatory statement anyway based on a gamble that Jacoby would not act to enforce his rights, or that the cost of litigation was worth it to serve their broader goal of discrediting West’s campaign.”
A guilty plea in 2008 while he worked for the California Republican Party had nothing to do with any campaign matters, Jacoby says. His misdemeanor plea related only to using the wrong California address for his own voter registration in 2006 and 2007, he says.
He was initially charged with voter registration fraud. West hired him this year to collect signatures.
“Murray recasts the factual dispute as merely one of opinion—whether the plea is ‘relevant’ to his political work. But Murray’s and CNN’s readers were never given the facts to form such an opinion because Murray and CNN knowingly and purposely misreported Jacoby’s charge and plea,” the suit says.
Jacoby seeks $1 million in compensatory damages, in addition to unspecified punitive damages.