Famed civil liberties attorney Alan Dershowitz won a procedural victory in court that will allow his $300 million lawsuit against CNN to proceed to depositions.
Attorneys for CNN filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in November but a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida did not agree with their argument and said Dershowitz can proceed.
The lawsuit claims that CNN unfairly edited comments from Dershowitz about whether former President Donald Trump could have been impeached if he committed an illegal act that he believed was in the public interest.
Dershowitz says in the lawsuit that CNN repeated that clip over and over in order to make him appear as if he “had lost his mind.”
Following the airing of that clip over and over again, the hosts, together with their panel guests, including CNN employees and paid commentators, exploded into a one-sided and false narrative that Professor Dershowitz believes and argued that as long as the President believes his reelection is in the public interest, that he could do anything at all – including illegal acts – and be immune from impeachment. The very notion of that was preposterous and foolish on its face, and that was the point: to falsely paint Professor Dershowitz as a constitutional scholar and intellectual who had lost his mind.
CNN’s attorneys argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed based on the fair reporting privilege of the press.
Dershowitz appeared on Newsmax to explain that the fair reporting privilege didn’t extend to CNN’s actions exactly because they unfairly misrepresented what he said.
“They took out the words ‘lawful and illegal’ in order, deliberately, to convey the impression that I thought the president could engage in illegal and unlawful conduct and still not be impeached, exactly the opposite of what I said,” said Dershowitz.
In an email to Law & Crime, Dershowitz said he was looking forward to “deposing the commentators and heads of CNN and of the truth coming out.”
Here’s the interview with Dershowitz about the lawsuit:
Dershowitz’ CNN lawsuit will advance: I will depose Jeff Zucker
www.youtube.com