Judge Throws Out Truth Social’s Defamation Lawsuit Against The Guardian
A Florida judge granted motions to dismiss to The Guardian and other defendants in a defamation lawsuit filed by Truth Social’s parent company, Truth Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), the latest example of President Donald Trump’s legal actions against media companies not holding up in court.
The dispute arose from two articles published by the UK-based Guardian in March 2023 “reporting on a federal criminal investigation related to TMTGs receipt of two payments totaling $8 million,” Judge Hunter Carroll of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit Court for Sarasota County wrote in his order summarizing the case, including reports that “federal prosecutors in New York were conducting a money laundering investigation related to the payments, which were wired through the Caribbean from Paxum Bank and ES Family Trust, entities with ties to an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin and a history of providing banking services to the sex worker industry,” and that the origins of the loans caused alarm at TMTG and TMTG’s then CFO weighed returning the money, but the money was ultimately not returned.”
The Guardian article was cited by other media outlets, including an article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. TMTG sued The Guardian, the Herald-Tribune, and the two reporters whose bylines were on the articles, arguing that the articles were false and defamatory, insisting that TMTG “is not, and never was, under investigation for money laundering,” and TMTG and its executives have not “been the focus of any investigation.”
TMTG acknowledged it was a public figure, the judge wrote, meaning any defamation complaint would have to establish “actual malice,” and finding that the plaintiff had failed to do so, specifically invoking Florida’s “anti-SLAPP” statute, which provides expedited process and monetary remedies including attorneys’ fees to defendants when they can show that a lawsuit against them was “without merit and primarily because such person or entity has exercised the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue, or right to peacefully assemble, to instruct representatives of government, or to petition for redress of grievances before the various governmental entities of this state, as protected by the First Amendment.”
Merely reporting on negative information is not enough to establish actual malice, the judge’s opinion noted, and establishing actual malice “requires more than a departure from journalistic standards or a mere failure to investigate.”
The Guardian article, Carroll wrote, “was based on multiple sources familiar with the investigation, review of internal TMTG communications, investigation of the entities who made the loans, and fruitless requests for further information from the Department of Justice, the investigators’ office, and outside counsel for TMTG.”
TMTG’s CEO Devin Nunes, formerly a Republican congressman from California, had denied that TMTG knew of issues related to the loans, which the Guardian included in its reporting. But again, that did not show actual malice, the judge wrote, because “[t]his denial is not germane to the existence or nature of the investigation, and even if it was, such commonplace denials do not establish actual malice.”