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Law360 (May 7, 2020, 8:46 PM EDT ) President Donald Trump's reelection campaign is trying to punish an NBC affiliate for "airing the president's own words" in a political advertisement criticizing the administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the broadcaster told a Wisconsin federal court.
The defamation suit — the latest in a string that the campaign has filed against various media outlets it claims libeled the president in one way or another — fails on its face because the campaign isn't the one that was allegedly defamed, and nothing in the ad was untrue, the affiliate said Wednesday.
Despite working to "blur the distinction" between the president and his campaign, the suit doesn't manage to achieve its constitutional obligation to prove the alleged defamation was "of and concerning" the plaintiff, WJFW-NBC argued.
"President Trump did not bring this lawsuit — his campaign organization did," the broadcaster said in its filing. "For this reason alone, the complaint fails to state a claim, and the court should dismiss it with prejudice."
But the campaign's argument for why the advertisement was defamatory also stands on shaky legs, according to the NBC affiliate.
"The complaint's allegations that it would sway voters — precisely what any political advertisement (or, for that matter, newspaper editorial) is designed to accomplish — does not render this advertisement defamatory," it told the court.
WJFW-NBC's request to doff the suit comes only days after it managed to pull the allegations into Wisconsin federal court.
The campaign has accused the NBC affiliate of defaming Trump and by extension his reelection campaign by airing an advertisement created by a Democratic Party-aligned super PAC that claimed the president called the threat of the coronavirus a hoax.
There were only around 60 confirmed U.S. cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, when Trump accused Democrats of politicizing the virus at a rally in late February.
"They tried the impeachment hoax," the president said, later adding, "And this is their new hoax."
But in the advertisement crafted by the left-leaning super PAC, two clips from that speech were spliced together so that it sounded like Trump said, "The coronavirus, this is their new hoax."
And this, the campaign claims, was libel aimed at tricking listeners into thinking that the president had claimed that the virus was not real, something that could harm his chances of reelection and undermine the campaign's work.
But the broadcaster told the court that the suit is nothing more than a "clear, concerted effort to chill critical examination of the administration's policies."
"The First Amendment does not tolerate such speech-chilling litigation, and the court should swiftly dismiss it," the broadcaster said.
Representatives for the parties did not immediately return a request for comment.
The NBC unit is represented by Ballard Spahr LLP and Godfrey & Kahn SC.
The campaign is represented by Husch Blackwell LLP.
The suit is Donald J. Trump for President Inc. v. Northland Television LLC, case number 3:20-cv-00385, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.
--Additional reporting by Dave Simpson. Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
