Can you sue for slander over twitter statements or fake news sites? According to the votemaster (http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2017/Pres/Maps/Mar05.html#item-2), Trump picked this up from Breitbart which got it from some talk show host named Mark Levin. Could Obama sue all three since they seemed to have made the charge with not a shred of evidence?
IANAL, but I can’t imagine that he can. If a politician could sue for slander every time they were subjected to some ridiculous over-the-top accusation then all of them could do it (including Trump himself). Key problem is the “public figure” standard for libel, which requires either knowing the falsity of the charges or at least reckless disregard for the truth.
[Technicality: anyone can sue for anything. I assume the question is he can successfully sue.]
He would have to prove that a reasonable person would believe Trump. After all that’s happened, I doubt you could claim that.
I was going to ask the same thing. Obama’s still a public figure even of he’s no longer in office. I doubt he would so even if he technically has a case though.
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Nitpick: if he could sue for anything, it would be libel, not slander. Slander is defamation in speech; libel is defamation in printed material. Although twitter kind of straddles the boundary, I think it would be libel. I wonder if a case of libel due to statements in twitter has ever reached a court.
First of all, the “Public Figure” problem means that (IANAL) Obama would have to prove Trump knew the allegation was false and malicious.
Second, did Trump allege it was illegal, or just that it had been done? If it’s possible he meant that Obama followed the law to obtain a warrant, then there is no slanderous allegation.
Trump said he was “Bad (sick)” He also clearly implied it was illegal. All of these things are actionable, although with a very high standard. Could he sue? Sure. Could he prevail? Maybe (but difficult). Will he sue? Not a chance. If I recall correctly from the Paula Jones lawsuit, a sitting president can defer a civil suit until he’s out of office for “official acts.” I haven’t researched whether tweets from the President are “official acts.” It would, however, be fun to see Trump sit for a deposition.
What about suing the guy who made up the claim?
He may be able to, but won’t. When you wrestle with pigs. . .
Folks, that’s the problem with mass surveillance which was identified and leaked to us by Edward Snowden. Trump claims Obama wiretapped him. Trump does not have to worry about a lawsuit when he makes this claim because he was being wiretapped. 100% certain he was. Because all US citizens are being wiretapped. It’s a fact that he was spied upon, because every US citizen is being spied upon in all their electronic communications. It’s all being stored at some NSA server somewhere. Whether Trump was personally targeted in an abuse of executive power, and the info used for political motives during the campaign, well that’s another story and it remains to be seen if it’s true and even if it did happen, it is probably unprovable.
Few people are wiretapped literally, as in attaching a device to a physical wire they are communicating over, but if you expand it to generic term for surveillance of communications then yeah, it’s a lot. And I also agree it’s not an established fact that there wasn’t special surveillance on Trump’s campaign perhaps for reasons that could be justified, even if Obama himself didn’t say ‘go wiretap Trump without a warrant’ though Trump’s accusation could be interpreted as claiming that happened. There’s a good possibility of some element of truth in what Trump claims depending how you construe his statement and what further facts come to light.
But as others have said there’s no real chance of a successful libel suit even if there’s no truth to it.
Is it true that as president Trump actually has the ability to find out if he had been previously wiretapped, that he doesn’t need to guess about it at all, he can easily find out for a fact.
Because if so and if the allegation isn’t true, then surely Obama can rightly say that Trump knew the claim was false and malicious due to the fact that he had all the inside information he needed, or at least had the full ability to easily get that information?
I’m sure that that phrase has a specific legal definition, but as a layman, it’s hard to imagine a more apt phrase to describe Trump’s behavior in general.
If the tweet did not explicitly say “illegal wire tapp” then the onus is on Obama to prove Trump meant it was illegal. A thing can be bad but not illegal. So right off the bat, Obama would have a very difficult time proving libel/slander.
It’s one thing to say Trump could know, it’s another to prove he asked and was answered before he tweeted an alternative fact.
And yes, another reason why the claim is batshit crazy - what would have happened?
Either the FBI did get a FISA warrant, proved to a judge they had reasonable grounds - then Obama as Nixon is the least of the Trump team’s problems. The FISA judge would have to see some really really convincing evidence that (a) something illegal was going on and (b) the intercepts would go a decent way toward helping prove this was the situation. Especially with a candidate or president-elect, I don’t see any judge accepting anything less than slam-dunk evidence.
Or, Obama ordered the FBI to “tapp” the phones without a warrant. Obama doesn’t phone the NYC FBI office - he talks to Comey who talks to his minions who phone the office; so a whole chain of minions would have to be compliant in a serious breach of the law, which could mean all of them could go to jail. I doubt it.
Or, Obama has his own plumber crew like Nixon? Hmmm, so some totally black-ops people manage to infiltrate Trump tower while the Secret Service is specifically looking for all this sort of stuff. But most phones are digital now, you don’t “tapp” wires with alligator clips. The Trump offices will have a PBX or VoIP setup and use digital trunk lines. You have to go to the systems people for the phone company and get them to install a digital tap -which means involving several layers of the phone company IT as well. In this scenario or the one above, any minion connecting a “tapp” without the correct paperwork is exposing themselves to serious legal liability including the possibility of jail time.
So I don’t see a legal or illegal “tapp” of Trump Tower phones being even a remote possibility.
Yes. Sort of. I think Obama could claim the implication of these tweets was that Obama did something improper.
I repeat, of course, there is no chance Obama would want to pursue this.