Attorney Mark S. Zaid first rose to prominence through his work defending national security workers — many of them whistleblowers — who spoke out against what they viewed as government misconduct. Lately, he has become better known as the go-to attorney defending critics of Donald Trump and his administration — including Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence. As you can imagine, it has kept him quite busy.
After Troye described Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, as a liar who put the lives of Navy Seals at risk, Patel’s lawyer demanded a retraction and threatened a defamation lawsuit. Instead, Zaid responded to the threat with a defiant letter featuring a Monty Python character with his tongue sticking out.
Legal threats are a time-honored tradition in Trumpworld: Recently, an attorney for another of Trump’s nominees, Fox News host/aspiring secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, warned that the woman who accused Hegseth of sexual assault in 2017 (leading to a confidential settlement) will face a defamation lawsuit “if she repeats these false statements.” Trump himself has repeatedly threatened opponents with lawsuits over the years, and has sometimes followed through and filed suit. Until now, he has almost never been successful. But on Saturday, ABC News said it would donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit against anchor George Stephanopoulos, who had mischaracterized the technical conclusions of author E. Jean Carroll’s civil suit against Trump.
The settlement sparked widespread criticism, and it’s not clear what — if anything — the media hopes to gain from such capitulation. So we asked Zaid about the chilling effect ABC’s response could have on the media and future critics of the incoming president. Trump, meanwhile, has already moved on to new targets: Monday evening he reportedly filed suit against pollster Ann Selzer (whose numbers had shown Harris ahead in the final weeks of the campaign) and the The Des Moines Register.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Were you surprised that ABC News made this donation in response to Donald Trump’s lawsuit?
I was very surprised hearing of the settlement, especially having seen that Donald Trump was ordered to sit for a deposition in this case. The size of the settlement sum is significant, notwithstanding that it’s the Walt Disney company that’s obviously paying it.
Trump’s suit centered on Stephanopoulos saying on-air that Trump had been found “liable for rape.” Trump was found liable for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, but not specifically for rape. Are there other cases out there where someone has prevailed with a claim like this?
This post was originally published on The.Ink.