Democratic super PAC: We will fight Trump in court over ads
Source: AP
By BILL BARROW and BRIAN SLODYSKO
WASHINGTON (AP) A leading Democratic super PAC has promised it will tangle in court with President Donald Trumps reelection campaign to keep airing television ads the Republican president is trying to keep off the airwaves.
Priorities USA Action chief Guy Cecil said Thursday that his group will intervene as a defendant in a lawsuit that Trumps campaign filed in Wisconsin state court to block a local NBC affiliate from airing one of the super PACs ads that blasts the presidents response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Trump campaign is trying to railroad a TV station into censorship of ads critical of the president, and we will not let that stand, Cecil said. We stand by the facts in the ad and will defend it in court if necessary.
The lawsuit, filed against WJFW-TV, an NBC affiliate in northern Wisconsin, sets up a notable battle between Trumps financially flush reelection campaign and one of the biggest spending groups in Democratic politics. Priorities USA has spent much of Trumps term researching voters views in key battleground states, including Wisconsin, that delivered Trump his Electoral College victory in 2016, and the PAC has committed to an extended television and digital advertising campaign to potential swing voters in those states.
President Donald Trump, followed by Vice President Mike Pence, walks on the Colonnade to speak about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, Wednesday, April 15, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Read more: https://apnews.com/7843b9119b5194d5ec3c17a305a9c75f
bucolic_frolic
(43,064 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,966 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,615 posts)Trump is deliberately picking on a small local station that he knows wouldn't have enough resources of its own to fight back. I'm glad to see an organization with deep pockets step in to help.
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)lastlib
(23,168 posts)Love spending my stimulus money this way!
lastlib
(23,168 posts)That's doing stimulus the right way!!
I was spending mine with Biden and a few other strategic groups, but may send a little this way (though I'm not totally crazy about Actblue--they take too much of a cut, I'd rather get it straight to the target.)
ffr
(22,665 posts)howardmappel
(80 posts)And real lawyers and real lawfirms will be lining up along side Priorities. This will not be case of Trump being able to threaten a small tv station with his lawyers. And Trump is not going to like being forced to turn over documents in discovery. Similarly, Trump is arguing that he doesn't have to comply with discovery in the suit by Amazon re: the DOD contract, claiming a vastly and unprecedented expansion of executive privilege. But if he is going to claim that Amazon will say okay, then you, Trump, can't introduce ANY evidence that you didn't interfere. And there goes Trump's defense.
He and his monkees (his lawyers) are idiots. Note I am not suggesting that all lawyers are monkees, just his. Full disclosure, I am a lawyer.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)TeamPooka
(24,210 posts)He hires such bad lawyers and trying to intimidate TV stations is a bad move.
Massacure
(7,515 posts)It's a tactic known as SLAPP - Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation - and it's goal is to intimidate, coerce, or silence an entity that would have difficulty paying to mount a legal defense. Many states have what are called SLAPP-back laws designed to thwart these types of lawsuits and which allow the defendant to recover attorneys fees and collect damages if the plaintiff fails to meet a certain threshold of viability in their lawsuit.
A quick look at Wikipedia shows that Wisconsin doesn't have any statutes related to SLAPP protections.
TeamPooka
(24,210 posts)ibegurpard
(16,685 posts)The purpose of the lawsuit against a small station was to intimidate an organization without the resources to fight it.