Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday congratulated Project Veritas after the watchdog group secured a victory in an ongoing lawsuit against The New York Times.
Project Veritas filed a defamation suit against the paper on Oct. 30, 2020, focusing on two reports by the Times, including a Sept. 29 report titled: “Project Veritas Video Was a ‘Coordinated Disinformation Campaign,’ Researchers Say” by Maggie Astor and Tiffany Hsu.
The two reporters cited researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington who supposedly found Project Veritas’ stories suggesting Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was part of a voter fraud effort was a “concerted disinformation campaign.”
The lawsuit took issue with the Times’s description of a Project Veritas video as “deceptive” and created using “unidentified sources and with no verifiable evidence.”
In the 15-page ruling last week, Supreme Court Justice Charles Wood rejected the Times’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
“The facts submitted by Veritas could indicate more than standard, garden variety media bias and support a plausible inference of actual malice,” Supreme Court Justice Charles Wood wrote in his ruling last week. “There is a substantial basis in law to proceed to permit the plaintiff to conduct discovery and to then attempt to meet its higher standard of proving liability through clear and convincing evidence of actual malice.”
“If a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader, including a court that may need to determine whether it is factor opinion, that it is opinion,” Wood added.
“I want to congratulate Project Veritas on their big win on the New York Times,” Trump said. “Now the suit will continue and whatever you can do for their legal defense fund, we’re with them all the way. They do incredible work, they find things nobody would even believe possible. So James, congratulations.”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” O’Keefe responded.
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