'They’re going to keep telling lies': Legal expert predicts Fox suit will help Jack Smith and Fani Willis
Harvard Constitutional Law professor Laurence Tribe explained to MSNBC that some might be disappointed in the final Dominion settlement with Fox News. However, he explained, the real problem for the network is not the financial loss but the fact that special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can use the lawsuit as part of their cases against Donald Trump.
Speaking to MSNBC's "Deadline White House" on Wednesday, Tribe began by saying that those who wanted a public apology on air from Fox personalities isn't what the civil justice system is designed to do. Besides, he argued, it's not like any of the viewers would buy it.
"It wouldn't have helped anything. I mean, for [Sean] Hannity or one of these guys to go on air and wink and nod and say, 'Yeah, we weren't telling the truth,' who would have believed they actually meant it?" asked Tribe. "Their audience wouldn't have believed it. Their audience didn't even learn today the size of the settlement amount. So, it seems to me that this was a very important victory for truth and for Dominion..."
In his commentary on Tuesday, former FBI general counsel and NYU Law professor, Andrew Weissmann, warned that all this suit really did is give Fox guidelines for being more nebulous in their attacks. So instead of citing a specific person they can say "liberals" or instead of a certain company, they'll say "those companies."
Tribe agreed, "I think they're going to keep telling lies. I think they're going to avoid lying about particular plaintiffs who can sue them. That doesn't mean that big lies will remain undeterred permanently, but what this does is underscore the importance of what Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia, and Jack Smith, the special counsel, are able to do in holding Trump and Trump's allies accountable for the attempted coup that was based on the big lie and for the insurrection that big lie fomented in a way."
What hasn't been discussed, however, is how the criminal justice system can vindicate the public interest and the interest in democracy, he explained.
"The civil justice system can make a victim whole, but it can't make the country whole," Tribe said. "No amount of lawyering — and the lawyering, Stephen Shackelford and Davida [Brook] and Justin [Nelson], was brilliant. No amount of good lawyering, however good, would have vindicated the full national interest. That's going to depend very much on the D.A. of Fulton County and on the special counsel and that's the way the system is designed and that's the way it ought to work."
He went on to say that he's optimistic that when the final word in history is written that the "big lie" will be exposed for what it is and that Donald Trump will forever be associated with that lie and those injured by Fox.
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