Former top Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal’s $30 million libel suit against Matt Drudge – which Blumenthal suddenly dropped yesterday — is part of an “orchestrated campaign from the [Clinton-Gore] White House to use the threat of lawsuits to intimidate conservative journalists,” claims former top Clinton confidante Dick Morris.
And the $165 million defamation lawsuit filed recently against WorldNetDaily.com by Gore fund-raiser and crony Clark Jones appears to be just the latest in that “campaign,” says Editor and CEO Joseph Farah.
Blumenthal, almost four years after filing the action — in response to Drudge’s reporting that the Clinton aide had beaten his wife, a story Drudge retracted almost immediately upon learning it was untrue — withdrew the much-heralded lawsuit, received nothing from Drudge, and in fact agreed to pay Drudge $2,500 in travel expenses.
“Basically,” Morris said on Fox’s popular Hannity and Colmes program, “Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story when Newsweek was too chicken to run it. And then they retaliated by this libel suit.”
Noting that the Drudge suit had created “a chilling effect” on media critical of the Clinton-Gore administration, Morris revealed that he too had been dished out a taste of the legal-intimidation medicine.
During previous appearances on Hannity & Colmes, Morris recalled, he had “said negative things” about two individuals: Jack Paladino, a private investigator hired to investigate the so-called Clinton “bimbos” (women who voiced sexual-harassment complaints or worse against Clinton), and Ken Bacon, a Defense Department employee who released Linda Tripp’s personnel file to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker.
“After both of those occasions,” the former top Clinton adviser revealed, “I received letters from the lawyers for those gentlemen, demanding a retraction.” Although Morris never retracted his comments, he noted that “Ken Bacon was Sidney Blumenthal’s colleague at The New Yorker. And this was an orchestrated campaign from the White House to use the threat of lawsuits to intimidate conservative journalists.”
Now that Blumenthal has suddenly dropped the suit against Drudge, “we see what a fraud it is,” said Morris.
In what may be the latest in the “orchestrated campaign” to intimidate the small number of media organizations that dared to investigate and criticize the Clinton-Gore administration, a Tennessee Democratic Party activist, top Democrat fundraiser and friend of Al Gore has filed a $165 million libel suit against WorldNetDaily.com for its 18-part investigative series on political corruption in Gore’s home state. Some believe the series, widely read between September and Election Day, resulted in Gore losing Tennessee and, thus, the Electoral College vote and the presidential election.
“Newspapers were reprinting the reports and selling out all their copies in hours,” wrote Joseph Farah, editor and CEO of WorldNetDaily.com. “Radio talk shows throughout the state were trumpeting the reports and interviewing the intrepid journalists responsible for them. And local activists involved in the periphery of the reports were getting hot under the collar.
“The result?’ concludes Farah. “Gore lost his state and the presidency. I saw a report from his campaign manager recently that said, if she could do it all over again, the Gore campaign would not take Tennessee for granted.”
Filed by Savannah, Tenn., car dealer and Gore pal Clark Jones, the suit names WorldNetDaily.com and reporters Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays, along with numerous other defendants.
Jones claims personal embarrassment and humiliation as a result of some of the articles, which said that he reportedly intervened in a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe into narcotics trafficking in Hardin County in 1999. In addition, the car dealer claims that the articles implicated him in the 1980 arson of his own business, the Jones Motor Company, and also pegged him as a suspected drug dealer. He claims business losses and health problems resulted from the series as well.
Both Hays and Thompson are veteran journalists. Hays’ 20-part series on drug trafficking in west Tennessee was primarily responsible for the Courier of Savannah winning the 2000 Public Service Award from the Tennessee Press Association. Thompson, an Emmy-award-winning investigative report was a founding producer of ABC’s 20/20 as well as Mike Wallace’s producer for a number of years at CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Also named in the suit were five John Does and five Jane Does, as well as the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., WSIB-AM in Selmer, Tenn., the Decatur County Chronicle, WTVF Newschannel 5 in Nashville, the Savannah Snitch, the Savannah Journal, Larry Brinton, a commentator for WTVF and H.J. Maxedon of Selmer, Tenn.
Representing Jones in the lawsuit, which was filed in the Hardin County, Tenn., Circuit Court, is former state Democratic Party leader and U.S. Senate candidate Houston Gordon of Covington, Tenn., and Savannah attorney Curt Hopper. WorldNetDaily.com, Thompson and Hays are represented by First Amendment specialist Michael F. Pleasants of Memphis, Tenn.
Editor’s note: WorldNetDaily has established a Legal Defense Fund to offset legal costs in defending itself against this lawsuit. Contributions can be made online, or by calling WND toll-free at 1-877-909-1776. Also, a check, made payable to WorldNetDaily Legal Defense Fund, can be mailed to: WorldNetDaily.com, Inc., P.O. Box 409, Cave Junction, OR 97523.
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John Stossel