Trump’s defamation lawsuit against CNN over ‘the Big Lie’ dismissed in Florida

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit Donald Trump filed against CNN in which the former US president claimed that references in news articles or by the network’s hosts to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election as “the Big Lie” were tantamount to comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

Trump had been seeking punitive damages of $475 million in the federal lawsuit filed last October in South Florida, claiming the references hurt his reputation and political career.

He accused CNN of waging a campaign of “libel and slander” against him and the lawsuit claimed “The Big Lie,” a phrase with Nazi connotations, has been used in reference to him more than 7,700 times on CNN since January 2021.

“The ‘Big Lie’ is a direct reference to a tactic employed by Adolf Hitler and appearing in Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” the complaint said. “The phrase is not taken lightly and is not bandied about blithely.”

Trump is a candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination in what is his third run for the presidency as a major-party candidate.

US District Judge Raag Singhal, who was appointed by Trump, said Friday in his ruling that the former president’s defamation claims failed because the references were opinions and not factual statements.

Moreover, it was a stretch to believe that, in viewers’ minds, that phrase would connect Trump’s efforts challenging the 2020 election results to Nazi propaganda or Hitler’s genocidal and authoritarian regime, the judge said.

“CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people,” the judge wrote in his decision.

Email messages seeking comment were sent to Trump’s attorneys in South Florida and Washington.

CNN declined to comment on Sunday.

Trump had a caustic relationship with CNN and other major news outlets like The New York Times during his term, branding them “fake news” and repeatedly raging against them on social media.

As president, Trump repeatedly attacked the media, which resonated with his conservative followers. He similarly filed lawsuits against big tech companies with little success. His case against Twitter (now X) for knocking him off its platform following the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection was thrown out by a California judge in 2022.

Trump is facing a number of indictments in separate legal cases including his handling of classified government documents, and over his alleged efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election.

The twice-impeached former president was first indicted in the classified documents case last month, accused of endangering national security by holding onto top secret nuclear and defense information after leaving the White House.

The Justice Department added charges Thursday to its more than three dozen counts against Trump, who was found by a jury in a civil trial in May to have raped a writer in Manhattan in the 1990s.

Trump is also facing dozens of felony charges in a case involving hush money payments to a porn star in New York and is bracing for indictment in separate state and federal investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In a major development Thursday in the documents probe, Special Counsel Jack Smith alleged that Trump, who is scheduled to go on trial at the height of the campaign in March and May next year, asked a worker at his beachfront estate in Florida to delete surveillance footage to obstruct investigators.

Trump, who denies all wrongdoing, was also charged with illegally retaining national defense information over a document he is accused of showing to journalists at his New Jersey golf club.

Trump pledged Friday to pursue his White House bid, even if convicted and sentenced in one of the legal cases.

AFP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.