Critics of the American Bar Association said the decision was ironic since the group is supposed to explore issues about threats to free speech.
Source: Fearing Trump, Bar Association Stifles Report Calling Him a ‘Libel Bully’ – The New York Times
This tale by Adam Liptak is wretchedly funny. A bunch of lawyers are so intimidated by the idea that Trump might sue them for defamation, they won’t release a report they did confirming that…he intimidates people by threatening to sue them for defamation.
This news is being reported in and nicely basted by major news media. Who get threatened with Trump defamation lawsuits all the time.
I devoted a minute or so (no, actually less than a minute) to: what the hell is wrong with the ABA? And I realized a Trump lawsuit against the ABA would cost them money in legal fees to defend themselves. Even though such a lawsuit–as they absolutely must know, I mean, they’re lawyers–would probably be summarily dismissed in a few months.
Although you’d think they’d also know that Illinois–the ABA’s headquarters are in Chicago–has an anti-SLAPP law.
So what is anti-SLAPP? ⇐ Do this link, because I don’t have time to explain it: I just saw a tweet saying that a particular (new?) militia loony group has announced to the populace of the United States, “We are your neighbors.” There was a distinctive photo of two of those guys–who may be the entire group, I don’t know–and they are bigly fat and bigly bearded and bigly wearing sort of Western clothes and bigly carrying bigly guns. Since they said they’re my neighbors, I’m rushing out right now onto West End Avenue to see if I can find them.
See the picture that got me so excited with this link to Mother Jones.
Maybe I’ll take my dumb cell phone and if I spot them I’ll take a picture, although my phone takes very bad pictures and balks when I try to send them to my email, so this may not happen in anything like an optimal way. But if/when I find them, I’ll report in.
UPDATE on ABA-Trump story 10/31/2016. Just got this abstract off Twitter:
Trump Libel Article Will Run in ABA Publication
An article calling Donald Trump a “libel bully” and a “libel loser” will run in an American Bar Association publication after all, over the concerns of ABA officials who worried about running afoul of the group’s nonpartisan stance and inviting a lawsuit from Trump.
Someone blinked.