Retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz misplaced his bid on Friday to overturn a ruling that dismissed his defamation lawsuit towards NCS over the information channel’s protection of remarks he made throughout President Donald Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial.
The eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Dershowitz offered no proof that NCS’s reporters and commentators operated with “actual malice” in protecting Dershowitz’s protection of Trump’s push for Ukraine to analyze his rival in the 2020 race, Democrat Joe Biden.
Dershowitz “made a spontaneous series of remarks before Congress that, he says, were misinterpreted by pundits. But even if those commentators did report incorrectly on Dershowitz’s statements, he has offered no evidence that they did so intentionally,” Judge Britt Grant wrote in the bulk opinion.
Dershowitz in an interview stated he would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the eleventh Circuit resolution relied on a landmark 1964 ruling by the excessive court docket, New York Times v. Sullivan, that he stated has “been expanded unrealistically to make lying journalists immune.”
He cited a concurring opinion in Friday’s resolution by Judge Barbara Lagoa, who stated she solely voted to uphold the dismissal of Dershowitz’s lawsuit as a result of she was certain by Sullivan.
Lagoa stated there was “little dispute that NCS ‘defamed’ Alan Dershowitz under any common understanding of that term,” and that the “only thing standing between Dershowitz and justice is Sullivan.”
The third decide on the panel, Charles Wilson, in a concurring opinion defended Sullivan and the press protections it gives.
A NCS spokesperson declined to touch upon the choice.
Dershowitz was considered one of several high-profile attorneys Trump tapped throughout his first presidential time period after the Democratic-led House of Representatives impeached him in December 2019 on two expenses arising from his dealings with Ukraine.
Trump had requested that Ukraine examine Biden and his son Hunter, who had joined the board of Ukrainian power firm Burisma whereas his father was U.S. vice chairman, for corruption. Biden later defeated Trump in the 2020 election.
Dershowitz in the course of the impeachment trial offered an expansive defense of presidential power that provoked astonishment amongst Democrats.
“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in an impeachment,” Dershowitz stated, referring to the cost that Trump abused his energy by utilizing congressionally accredited safety support as leverage to get a overseas energy to smear Biden.
Dershowitz sued NCS following the outlet’s protection of its remarks, together with in its broadcasts. A federal decide in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, dominated for NCS in April 2023.
Dershowitz had argued that inner communications confirmed NCS and its commentators collaborated to break his status. But Grant in Friday’s majority opinion stated these inner messages “tend to support NCS’s position that the relevant speakers believed in the truth of their reporting.”
The case is Alan Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc., eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 23-11270.