MIAMI (Legal Newsline) – CNN has asked a federal judge to throw out the $300 million defamation lawsuit of attorney Alan Dershowitz, who says the channel misrepresented his statements during the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
CNN filed its motion Nov. 6 in federal court in response to the famed lawyer’s Sept. 15 lawsuit. CNN cherry-picked parts of his answers when covering the trial, forgetting to include when Dershowitz, while representing Trump, said a president could be impeached and removed from office if what he did was “somehow illegal,” regardless of his desire to be re-elected, the suit says.
Instead, his answer was presented as if the president could perform illegal acts as long as he or she did so in order to be re-elected, the suit says.
There are three reasons the case should be thrown out, CNN says:
-Its reporting is privileged as a fair report of a government proceeding because it aired Dershowitz’s argument without doctoring it;
-The statements made on CNN were opinions; and
-CNN did not act with actual malice.
“The fact that CNN reporters, along with other Congressmen and news outlets, understood Dershowitz’s legal argument differently than he intended does not establish that CNN knew its reporting was false,” the motion to dismiss says.
CNN calls the disputed testimony vague.
“CNN’s coverage of Dershowitz’s argument was not unique,” the motion says. “Many other news organizations reported on his argument in exactly the same way – interpreting it to mean that any action undertaken in the president’s electoral interests, legal or illegal, are not impeachable.”