FILE PHOTO: Ric Grenell, former Acting Director of National Intelligence speaks on Day 3 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 17, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
Former Trump administration official Olivia Troye has been cleared from a lawsuit accusing her of defaming Richard Grenell, who served as Trump's ambassador to Germany and director of national intelligence.
In a win for Troye, a former counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Mike Pence – turned staunch Trump critic – the federal judge overseeing the case ruled Thursday that Grenell failed to establish that the statement at issue "is defamatory per se."
“In sum, the court will dismiss the complaint because plaintiff has failed to state a claim,” U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. wrote Thursday.
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Grenell’s now-tossed lawsuit accused Troye of defaming him by posting a reply post on X where she wrote that Grenell, as ambassador to Germany, “tried to get Mike Pence to attend a white supremacist gathering.”
For the judge, the accusation didn't pass muster.
“Plaintiff has not explained how those alleged statements are ‘necessarily hurtful to his profession,” Alston concluded Thursday. Other courts, the judge added in his short seven-page opinion, “have held that similar claims are not defamatory.”
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