Historically, Accountability For Trump-Like Characters Has Gone Very Badly For Them—Lying Didn't Pay

Russian cyberespionage agents and hackers are targeting politicians again and will be active in the November elections. This time their manipulative lies will be joined by the same kind of tactics from China. “Covert Chinese accounts,” reported Tiffany Hsu and Steven Myers, “are masquerading online as American supporters of Trump, promoting conspiracy theories, stoking domestic divisions and attacking President Biden ahead of the election in November, according to researchers and government officials… In an echo of Russia’s influence campaign before the 2016 election, China appears to be trying to harness partisan divisions to undermine the Biden administration’s policies.”

When you think about which of the 10 Commandments, the Bible seller Donald Trump has violated most egregiously, you can’t possibly ignore “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” While some scholars and theologians have interpreted it to be referring to the act of lying in a legal or judicial context, particularly in the context of giving false testimony or lying under oath, many others insist that it encompasses lying in a broader sense and includes a prohibition against all forms of dishonesty and deceit. St. Augustine emphasized the importance of truthfulness in his writings and interpreted the commandment as a prohibition not only against perjury in legal matters but also against lying in everyday life. Ditto for Thomas Aquinas, who wrote in the Summa Theologica that the commandment forbids lying in any circumstance. John Calvin dealt with it the same Wayne way, emphasizing that it is the duty of Christians to speak truthfully and to avoid deceit and falsehood in all their dealings. And Martin Luther viewed the commandment against bearing false witness as a moral imperative for Christians to uphold truth and integrity in their words and actions. All bad news for Señor T.

And speaking of bad news for Señor T, on Sunday, Elizabeth Williamson wrote about “a cadre of attorneys” using defamation charges against a virtual tsunami of political duplicity and deception. A jury in Atlanta ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay over $148 million to election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss for defaming them and upending their lives. Now his own life is upended. Michael Gottlieb, “a partner at the firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher and a former associate counsel in the Obama White House, represented them for free. Convinced that viral lies threaten public discourse and democracy, he is at the forefront of a small but growing cadre of lawyers deploying defamation, one of the oldest areas of the law, as a weapon against a tide of political disinformation. Gottlieb has also represented the owner of the Washington pizzeria targeted by “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists as well as the brother of Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee staff member whose 2016 murder ignited bogus theories implicating his family.

“The new information landscape we’re in is a little bit like the Wild West— a lawless space,” said Ian Bassin, a co-founder of Protect Democracy. Lawyers, he said, have turned to defamation, which is legally defined as any false information, either published, broadcast or spoken, that harms the reputation of a person, business or organization. “It’s one of the most effective and only strategies for dealing with these out-and-out falsehoods,” Bassin said.

…Payouts have been particularly large for defamation cases against the right. In January the lawyer Roberta Kaplan defeated Trump in court when a jury ordered him to pay $83 million for defaming her client, E. Jean Carroll, a writer he sexually abused. Last year lawyers from the firm Susman Godfrey secured a $787.5 million settlement for Dominion Voting Systems from Fox News, one of the biggest ever in a defamation case, after Fox aired bogus theories falsely linking the company to election fraud. In late 2022 Sandy Hook families defamed by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones won a total of nearly $1.5 billion from juries in Texas and Connecticut, though Jones has yet to pay them anything.

…Gottlieb, who was a clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens and served on an Obama administration anti-corruption task force in Afghanistan, had his first foray into the post-truth world in 2016. That was when Jones and his Infowars outlet spread the lie that Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party operatives were running a child sex trafficking ring out of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizzeria owned by James Alefantis.

In December of that year, a man who had been binging on Infowars “Pizzagate” episodes fired a rifle inside the restaurant. No one was injured, but the gunman’s trip to Washington to avenge an imagined crime foreshadowed a series of violent attacks by conspiracy theorists, including the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

Jones insisted that the First Amendment protected the lies he had broadcast, like most defendants in these cases. But threatened with a lawsuit, he made an on-air retraction and removed all Pizzagate content from Infowars’ website and social media channels. The full settlement remains confidential.

… Law for Truth, part of Protect Democracy, has in the meantime filed defamation suits against the makers of the election conspiracy theory film 20,000 Mules; James O’Keefe, the former leader of Project Veritas, a right-wing group known for its sting operations; and Kari Lake, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, on behalf of people smeared by lies Lake told about the 2020 election.

Despite the activity, lawyers who see themselves as crusaders against lies are not declaring victory. Their cases are high profile and target key disinformation spreaders, but they acknowledge that they do not put a dent in more general widespread disinformation, like false statements about Covid vaccines.

“I think these lawsuits may be effective in stemming some of the worst viral disinformation,” said Katie Fallow, a senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “But there may be limits to how effective these lawsuits can be when there are other incentives, particularly political ones, to keep spreading it.”

And, if you’re wondering if there was any accountability attached to the Commandments before Gottlieb came along, there certainly was. Back in ancient Israel, where it all got started, adherence to the Ten Commandments was central to the religious and legal framework of society. Violations of these commandments often carried both religious and legal consequences— even for kings. Serious violations, including bearing false witness, could result in severe punishments, including fines, restitution, social stigma and divine judgment.

It didn’t end there. In medieval Europe, Christian societies were heavily influenced by the moral and legal principles derived from the Ten Commandments. Canon law, which governed the affairs of the Church, often overlapped with secular law, and violations of religious precepts could lead to ecclesiastical penalties such as excommunication. Additionally, secular authorities sometimes enforced laws based on biblical principles, including prohibitions perjury. And in Islamic societies, adherence to religious laws, including those derived from the Quran and Hadith, governed both personal conduct and public affairs. Violations of Islamic principles, such as prohibitions against false testimony, could result in severe legal penalties imposed by Islamic courts.