The lawsuit will proceed to the discovery process, including demands for documents and depositions from the journalists involved.
A federal judge has rejected National Public Radio’s bid to dismiss a Texas investment adviser’s libel suit over news reports about conspiracy theories surrounding the death of a Democratic National Committee staffer during the 2016 campaign.
Fox eventually retracted the online story it published, although Fox News prime-time host Sean Hannity publicly declared that he was not retracting his statements about Rich’s murder, including unproven claims that Rich might have been killed because of some role in leaking Democratic National Committee emails that U.S. officials say Russia hacked into and handed off to WikiLeaks.
“Plaintiff has alleged sufficient facts which plausibly show the Reports were not fair, true, and impartial accounts of the Wheeler complaint,” Mazzant wrote. “Additionally, even if the statements are considered a true report of the Wheeler complaint, as Defendants argue, the organization of the comments combined with the speculative commentary imply wrongdoing.”
The ruling means the lawsuit will proceed to the discovery process, including demands for documents and depositions from the journalists involved, Butowsky and others. Both sides in the case filed a motion Wednesday to facilitate that fact-gathering.