On Friday, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough warned that some of Donald Trump's top allies would be financially ruined for their 2020 election lies.
Fox News just agreed to pay $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation lawsuit and still faces another $2.7 billion defamation suit from Smartmatic, while MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was just ordered to pay $5 million to a software engineer in a dispute related to his false election claims -- and a legal expert told "Morning Joe" that Trump's allies were still in deep trouble.
"I think the individuals are even in worse shape than Fox because they can't say they're just in a news organization or they were claiming a reporter's privilege," said former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman. "I think there's a reason that, since Dominion has brought its suit, that you have not heard from Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell there has been -- you know, they've been quite muted that's because their public statements have gotten them in, deservedly, a lot of hot water because if you defame a company and put out these -- the big lie about a private company with deep pockets, they can sue you, which is exactly what's going on."
"I think that by all accounts, that is something that they really have to worry about they don't have a lot of defenses," he added. "The real issue is just how much money they can pay, because some of them have more than others. This is the kind of thing that can really bankrupt all of the individual defendants. You can be sure that Dominion is going to be, you know, pressing ahead hard with respect to each of them."
Scarborough agreed, saying their lies for the former president would eventually ruin them.
"They're going to be bankrupt," Scarborough said. "I mean, look at Rudy Giuliani. You look at these other people, I see absolutely no way for them to avoid bankruptcy. They just got caught in lie after lie after lie."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
- YouTube youtu.be
