'Threatens To Sue' Is The New 'Strenuously Object'

Roy Moore is threatening to sue the Washington Post because threats are free.

Former Judge Roy Moore has threatened to sue the Washington Post over its report that he had inappropriate sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl. Let’s cut to the chase: he won’t. There are three very good reasons for that:

  • If he wins, he won’t want a potentially years-long lawsuit lingering around, focusing on his alleged pedophilia. If he loses, he’ll be reloading for another run at some office in Alabama — remember, he’s been kicked off the bench twice and ran and won again — and, again, a lingering lawsuit about his alleged pedophilia doesn’t help him.
  • There’s no case here. Even if the Washington Post story is wrong, the paper reported and sourced the story according to every reasonable standard. Moore is a public figure, and even if they are wrong, the Post did its job. Only a judge like Roy Moore would allow a case against the Washington Post to go forward, and luckily most judges are actually serious about their jobs.
  • Truth is a defense. Just saying.

Roy Moore is… crazy, so who knows. But suing the Washington Post would be both crazy and pointless.

Even his threat to sue was limp: “At a Christian Citizen Task Force forum [in Alabama], Moore said the newspaper published false allegations — ‘for which they will be sued.'” Sure, Roy. You go on and PDF that lawsuit as soon as you have it.

But we’re at the point in society where “I’ll sue the paper” is almost a required threat while denying allegations of sexual misconduct. Remember when Donald Trump threatened to sue the 11 women who accused him of inappropriate contact? He didn’t, of course, but we expect people who have been allegedly falsely accused to sue their accusers or the publications that repeat the allegations.

Which is dumb. The bar for a successful defamation lawsuit is, rightly, very high. People with no legal training might think, “Oh, if I were accused of something I didn’t do, I’d sue.” But those people don’t have to pay for the lawyers, sit for the depositions, and give further publicity to the allegedly false allegations by making them the subject of a lawsuit.

The threat to sue has become empty rhetoric. It’s just another form of denial, and increasingly, it’s the weakest form. Roy Moore has not answered the allegations against him with specificity. He hasn’t talked about what, if any, relationship he did have with these women. Sean Hannity gave him a bunch of opportunities to issue credible denials to the allegations, and Moore came out with how he never dated anybody “without the permission of their mother.”

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His denials are a joke. His threat to sue the Washington Post is a joke. And if the people of Alabama elect him, they’re a joke.

And now, for those who didn’t catch the reference in the title, I present one of the best courtroom scenes about bad lawyering of all time.

GOP Senate Candidate Roy Moore Threatens to Sue Washington Post [NBC News]


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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.