Michael J. Gottlieb can by no means bear in mind the precise quantity — it’s $148,169,000— {that a} jury ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay the Georgia election employees Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. However Ms. Freeman’s phrases after the December 2023 victory are indelible to him.
“Don’t waste your time being angry at those who did this to me and my daughter,” mentioned Ms. Freeman 65, who along with her daughter Ms. Moss, 39, was falsely accused by Mr. Giuliani of aiding an imagined plot to steal the 2020 presidential election.
“We are more than conquerors.”
Lower than a decade in the past, the 2 girls would have struggled to discover a lawyer. However Mr. Gottlieb, a companion on the agency Willkie Farr & Gallagher and a former affiliate counsel within the Obama White Home, represented them at no cost. Satisfied that viral lies threaten public discourse and democracy, he’s on the forefront of a small however rising cadre of attorneys deploying defamation, one of many oldest areas of the regulation, as a weapon towards a tide of political disinformation.
Mr. Gottlieb has additionally represented the proprietor of the Washington pizzeria focused by “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists in addition to the brother of Seth Wealthy, a younger Democratic Nationwide Committee employees member whose 2016 homicide ignited bogus theories implicating his family. Within the Giuliani case, Mr. Gottlieb, his regulation companion Meryl Governski and different members of his workforce labored with Shield Democracy, a nonpartisan group that pushes for legal guidelines and insurance policies to counter what it sees as authoritarian threats.
Earlier than the Trump period and the explosion of social media, although, such instances had been nearly nonexistent.
“The new information landscape we’re in is a little bit like the Wild West — a lawless space,” mentioned Ian Bassin, a co-founder of Shield Democracy. Legal professionals, he mentioned, have turned to defamation, which is legally outlined as any false data, both revealed, broadcast or spoken, that harms the popularity of an individual, enterprise or group. “It’s one of the most effective and only strategies for dealing with these out-and-out falsehoods,” Mr. Bassin mentioned.
Up to now few years, greater than a dozen high-profile defamation instances have made their method by the courts. A majority have been introduced towards defendants on the best, however the best brings lawsuits too, typically towards media organizations.
In 2020 and 2021, The Washington Submit, CNN and NBC settled a defamation case introduced by Nick Sandmann, a Kentucky highschool scholar, who mentioned the shops had wrongly described his encounter with a Native American elder as a racially tinged confrontation. Mr. Sandmann’s swimsuit towards different shops, together with The New York Occasions, ended final week when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Payouts have been notably massive for defamation instances towards the best. In January the lawyer Roberta Kaplan defeated former President Donald J. Trump in court docket when a jury ordered him to pay $83 million for defaming her client, E. Jean Carroll, a author he sexually abused. Final 12 months attorneys from the agency Susman Godfrey secured a $787.5 million settlement for Dominion Voting Programs from Fox Information, one of many largest ever in a defamation case, after Fox aired bogus theories falsely linking the corporate to election fraud. In late 2022 Sandy Hook households defamed by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones gained a total of nearly $1.5 billion from juries in Texas and Connecticut, although Mr. Jones has but to pay them something.
In different instances, the folks harmed, like Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, can not afford attorneys or battle to search out corporations keen to pursue defendants unable or immune to paying huge damages, like Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Gottlieb has tried to fill that hole.
“The cost of bringing a defamation suit to trial can be enormous, often exceeding a quarter-million dollars’ worth of expenses, to say nothing of the value of attorney time,” mentioned Mark Bankston, a lawyer for among the Sandy Hook households defamed by Mr. Jones.
Mr. Gottlieb and his workforce check with their instances as a “hobby” in service to these whose lives and reputations have been broken by folks with energy and huge on-line followings. “I’ve always despised bullies that pick on defenseless or seemingly defenseless people,” Mr. Gottlieb, 47, mentioned in an interview in his Okay Avenue workplace in Washington. “There are so many ways to make your political points without endangering individual people’s lives.”
Mr. Gottlieb’s day job is full of the highly effective shopper record extra typical of huge Washington regulation corporations. He has represented Venezuela’s Citgo petroleum firm; helped the billionaire Steven A. Cohen beat a potential lifetime ban on managing client money after accusations of insider buying and selling at Mr. Cohen’s former hedge fund; and labored with President Biden’s son Hunter on behalf of a Romanian actual property tycoon whose seven-year jail sentence for corruption was later vacated by a Romanian court.
“I understand there are definitely people who would say, ‘Wait a minute — litigation for Citgo is not the same as the litigation you’re doing for Ruby and Shaye,’” he mentioned. “I feel fortunate to have had a career where I’ve had a wide variety of cases and have a practice that works different skill sets and different parts of my brain.
“However people want to think about it and look at it is sort of fine with me.”
The Submit-Reality World
Mr. Gottlieb, who was a clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens and served on an Obama administration anti-corruption process drive in Afghanistan, had his first foray into the post-truth world in 2016. That was when Mr. Jones and his Infowars outlet unfold the lie that Hillary Clinton and Democratic Get together operatives had been operating a baby intercourse trafficking ring out of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizzeria owned by James Alefantis.
In December of that 12 months, a person who had been binging on Infowars “Pizzagate” episodes fired a rifle inside the restaurant. Nobody was injured, however the gunman’s journey to Washington to avenge an imagined crime foreshadowed a collection of violent assaults by conspiracy theorists, together with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rebellion.
Mr. Jones insisted that the First Modification protected the lies he had broadcast, like most defendants in these instances. However threatened with a lawsuit, he made an on-air retraction and eliminated all Pizzagate content material from Infowars’ web site and social media channels. The total settlement stays confidential.
Quickly after the Pizzagate case, Mr. Gottlieb represented Aaron Wealthy, whose brother Seth Wealthy, 27, labored for the Democratic Nationwide Committee and was gunned down in a botched theft in 2016. The case stays unsolved, and wild theories that Seth Wealthy was killed by Democrats unfold from on-line fever swamps to Fox Information. Aaron Wealthy and his mother and father had been implicated within the plots, doxxed and harassed.
“If this had happened to me or my brother or sister and somebody was doing this to my parents, I would go ballistic,” Mr. Gottlieb mentioned. “And no one was helping them.”
In 2018 Mr. Gottlieb and Aaron Wealthy sued The Washington Occasions in addition to an web provocateur, Matt Sofa, and a businessman, Ed Butowsky, for spreading falsehoods that the 2 brothers had bought D.N.C. paperwork in a plot that resulted in Seth Wealthy’s homicide. Mr. Wealthy finally acquired a confidential settlement that included a retraction of the falsehoods unfold by each males and the newspaper, in addition to an apology to the Wealthy household. Mr. Wealthy’s mother and father retained Susman Godfrey and sued Fox Information. They obtained a confidential money settlement, however no apology.
The Wealthy case had taken years. At one level Mr. Gottlieb was named in a sweeping defamation lawsuit filed by one of many defendants, which was later dropped.
The aftermath of the 2020 election introduced extra calls from potential purchasers. Mr. Gottlieb appealed for assist to Mr. Bassin, the co-founder of Shield Democracy, who had served with Mr. Gottlieb within the Obama White Home Counsel’s Workplace.
The Georgia Case
Lower than two months later, Mr. Gottlieb and his workforce had been writing the criticism in Ruby Freeman, et al., v. Rudolph Giuliani.
In his frenzied public scramble to make his case that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani, the previous president’s lawyer, had unfold the false story that Ms. Freeman and her daughter Ms. Moss had colluded to falsify outcomes whereas counting ballots in Georgia. He falsely claimed {that a} video exhibiting Ms. Freeman handing a small merchandise to her daughter — a ginger mint — was the 2 girls exchanging USB thumb drives “as if they’re vials of heroin and cocaine.”
Mr. Trump echoed the bogus allegations. In an notorious taped telephone name with Georgia election officers, Mr. Trump named Ms. Freeman many times, calling her a “professional vote scammer” and “hustler.”
Threats poured in to the 2 girls. Individuals referred to as them traitors and, utilizing racial slurs, demanded they be lynched or shot. Others banged on Ms. Freeman’s entrance door and lurked outdoors her dwelling, forcing her into hiding. Ms. Moss had to surrender her job as an election employee and struggled to search out work.
Mr. Giuliani mentioned he would show his innocence. However he did not submit court-ordered paperwork, testify or name witnesses. Within the courtroom, he fiddled together with his telephone and rolled his eyes whereas the 2 girls described their terror.
In December, a jury in federal court docket in Washington ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss the $148 million. The case was placed on maintain after Mr. Giuliani declared chapter, and Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss are actually suing Mr. Giuliani once more, for his continued false statements about them.
Legislation for Reality, a part of Shield Democracy, has within the meantime filed defamation fits towards the makers of the election conspiracy principle movie “20,000 Mules”; James O’Keefe, the previous chief of Challenge Veritas, a right-wing group identified for its sting operations; and Kari Lake, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, on behalf of individuals smeared by lies Ms. Lake advised in regards to the 2020 election.
Regardless of the exercise, attorneys who see themselves as crusaders towards lies will not be declaring victory. Their instances are excessive profile and goal key disinformation spreaders, however they acknowledge that they don’t put a dent in additional basic widespread disinformation, like false statements about Covid vaccines.
“I think these lawsuits may be effective in stemming some of the worst viral disinformation,” mentioned Katie Fallow, a senior counsel on the Knight First Modification Institute at Columbia College. “But there may be limits to how effective these lawsuits can be when there are other incentives, particularly political ones, to keep spreading it.”
Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.
