Michael J. Gottlieb will never pay the exact amount a jury ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss: $148,169,000. I can’t remember. But he will never forget what Freeman said after his win in December 2023.
“Don’t waste your time being angry at the people who did this to me and my daughter,” she said, after she and her daughter Moss, 39, were accused of aiding and abetting an imaginary conspiracy against Giuliani. said Freeman, 65, the accused. To steal the 2020 presidential election.
“We are more than conquerors.”
Ten years ago, the two women would have struggled to find a lawyer. But Gottlieb, a partner at Willkie, Farr & Gallagher and former deputy general counsel to President Obama, represented them pro bono. Convinced that the spread of lies threatens public discourse and democracy, he is among the few who are deploying defamation, one of the oldest branches of the law, as a weapon against the tide of political disinformation. However, he is at the forefront of a growing group of lawyer executives.
Mr. Gottlieb also represents the owner of a Washington pizzeria that was targeted by the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists, as well as the Democratic National Committeeman who sparked a false theory that his family was involved in a 2016 murder. He also represents the younger brother of Seth Rich, a young member of the organization’s staff. In the Giuliani case, Mr. Gottlieb, his law partner Merrill Gavansky, and other members of his team were involved in a nonpartisan organization that promotes laws and policies to counter perceived authoritarian threats. In collaboration with Protect Democracy.
But before the Trump era and the explosion of social media, such incidents were virtually non-existent.
“The new information environment we’re in is a bit like the Wild West, a lawless country,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy. He said lawyers are focusing on defamation. Defamation is legally defined as false information published, broadcast, or spoken that damages the reputation of a person, business, or organization. “This is one of the most effective and only strategies to combat these blatant falsehoods,” Bassin said.
Over the past few years, more than a dozen high-profile defamation cases have come to court. Although the vast majority have been filed against right-wing defendants, the right has also filed lawsuits, often against news organizations.
In 2020 and 2021, the Washington Post, CNN, and NBC settled a defamation lawsuit filed by Kentucky high school student Nick Sandmann, who accused the news organization of misrepresenting his encounters with Native American elders. He claimed that the report was incorrectly reported as a species-based conflict. Sandman’s lawsuit against the New York Times and other media outlets ended last week after the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Compensation in defamation lawsuits against right-wingers is particularly high. In January, attorney Roberta Kaplan was ordered by a jury to pay $83 million for defaming her client, author E. Jean Carroll, who sexually abused her, and former President Donald J. won. Dominion Voting Systems attorney Susman Godfrey filed a defamation lawsuit last year after Fox News aired a false theory falsely linking Dominion Voting Systems to election fraud. Received $787.5 million in settlement from Fox News, the largest settlement in history. In late 2022, the Sandy Hook families vilified by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones won a total of nearly $1.5 billion from juries in Texas and Connecticut, but Jones has yet to pay them anything.
Go after defendants, like Freeman and Moss, who can’t afford lawyers, or who, like Giuliani, are unable or unwilling to pay large amounts in restitution. In some cases, they are having trouble finding an office. Mr. Gottlieb has sought to fill that gap.
“The cost of bringing a defamation case to court can be enormous, often exceeding $250,000 worth of expenses, not to mention the value of an attorney’s time.” Some Sandy Hook Family Members said attorney Mark Bankston. He was defamed by Mr. Jones.
Gottlieb and his team call their case a “hobby” for people whose lives and reputations have been harmed by powerful people or large online followings. “I have always despised bullies who bully people who are defenseless or appear defenseless,” Gottlieb, 47, said in an interview at his K Street office in Washington. “There are many ways to get your political point across without putting your personal life at risk,” he said.
Mr. Gottlieb’s day-to-day work is filled with a strong client list typical of large Washington law firms. He was the representative of Citgo Oil Company in Venezuela. We helped billionaire Stephen A. Cohen, who was accused of insider trading at Mr. Cohen’s former hedge fund, overcome a possible lifetime ban from managing client funds. And he worked with President Biden’s son Hunter on behalf of a Romanian real estate mogul whose seven-year prison sentence for corruption was later vacated by a Romanian court.
“I understand that there are definitely people who will say, ‘Wait a minute, the case against Citgo is different than the case you’re bringing against Ruby and Shay,'” he said. “I feel fortunate to have had a career where I have worked on a variety of cases and practiced practices that target different skill sets and different parts of the brain.”
“But it’s fine with me that people want to think about it and see it.”
post-truth world
Mr. Gottlieb, who clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens and served on the Obama administration’s anti-corruption task force in Afghanistan, first forayed into the post-truth world in 2016. That’s what Jones and his Infowars media company did. Hillary Clinton and Democratic operatives spread the lie that she was running a child sex ring out of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizzeria owned by James Alefantis.
In December of that year, a man who was intently watching an episode of Infowars’ “Pizzagate” fired a rifle inside the restaurant. No one was injured, but the gunman’s visit to Washington to avenge an imaginary crime is part of a series of violent attacks by conspiracy theorists, including the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. It was a premonition of an attack.
Jones, like most defendants in these cases, argued that the First Amendment protected the lies he told. However, after being threatened with a lawsuit, he made a retraction on air and removed all Pizzagate content from his Infowars website and social media channels. The full details of the settlement remain secret.
Immediately after the Pizzagate scandal, Mr. Gottlieb represented Aaron Rich. His older brother, Seth Rich, 27, worked for the Democratic National Committee and was shot and killed during an attempted robbery in 2016. The case remains unsolved, and there is a wild theory that Seth Rich was murdered. The Democratic coverage spread from the online frenzy swamp to Fox News. Aaron Rich and his parents were involved in the conspiracy, identified, and harassed.
“If this happened to me, my brother, my sister, and someone did this to my parents, I would be furious,” Gottlieb said. “And no one helped them.”
In 2018, Mr. Gottlieb and Aaron Rich were accused by The Washington Times and Internet provocateur Matt of spreading falsehoods that the brothers sold Democratic National Committee documents in a conspiracy that led to the murder of Seth Rich. Couch sued businessman Ed Butowski. Mr. Rich ultimately received a confidential settlement that included a retraction of the lies spread by both the man and the newspaper and an apology to the Rich family. Rich’s parents retained Sussman Godfrey and sued Fox News. They obtained a confidential cash settlement, but no apology.
The Rich case took years. At one point, Mr. Gottlieb was named in a broader defamation lawsuit filed by one of the defendants, which was later dropped.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, we have seen an increase in inquiries from potential customers. Mr. Gottlieb sought help from Mr. Bassin, who worked with Mr. Gottlieb in President Obama’s Office of Counsel.
georgia incident
Less than two months later, Mr. Gottlieb and his team were writing the case in Ruby Freeman et al. v. Rudolph Giuliani.
Mr. Giuliani, the former president’s lawyer, falsely claimed that Mr. Freeman and his daughter Moss conspired to falsify the results in a frenzied public fight to claim the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump. spread the word. Vote counting in Georgia. He said the video, which shows Freeman handing a small item (a ginger mint) to her daughter, shows the two women exchanging USB sticks “as if they were vials of heroin and cocaine.” He falsely claimed that he was there.
Trump also repeated the false claims. During her infamous phone call with Georgia election officials, Trump repeatedly mentioned Freeman by name, calling her a “professional voter fraudster” and a “hustler.”
The two women received threats. People called them traitors, used racial slurs and called for them to be lynched or shot. Others banged on Freeman’s front door and hid outside the home, forcing Freeman into hiding. Ms. Moss had to give up her job as a campaign worker and had trouble finding her job.
Giuliani said he would prove his innocence. However, he failed to produce documents, testify, or call witnesses as ordered by the court. In court, he fumbled with his phone and rolled his eyes as two women recounted their horrors.
In December, a jury in federal court in Washington ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay Mr. Freeman and Mr. Moss $148 million. The case was put on hold after Mr. Giuliani declared bankruptcy, and Mr. Freeman and Mr. Moss are now suing Mr. Giuliani again, accusing him of continuing to make false statements about them.
Meanwhile, Truth for Law, part of Protect Democracy, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the makers of the election conspiracy theory film “2000 Mules.” James O’Keefe, former leader of Project Veritas, a right-wing group known for undercover operations. Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake joined on behalf of those affected by Lake’s lies about the 2020 election.
Despite this work, lawyers who consider themselves campaigners against lies are not declaring victory. While their case has garnered attention and targeted major disinformation spreaders, it does not put a stop to more commonly disseminated misinformation, such as false statements about coronavirus vaccines. is recognized.
“I think these lawsuits may be effective in stopping some of the worst viral disinformation,” said Katie Farrow, senior counsel at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. . “However, there may be limits to the effectiveness of these lawsuits if there are other incentives, particularly political motivations, to continue to propagate them.”
Kenneth P. Vogel Contributed to the report. kitty bennett Contributed to research.
audio creator sarah diamond.
