Rachel Maddow is in line for more than a quarter-million dollar payment from the parent company of ultra-right-wing network One America News (OAN).
A federal judge ordered the payment, totaling $258,391.86, to cover lawyers’ fees and costs following dismissal of OAN’s defamation lawsuit against her. That’s less than Maddow and her network, MSNBC, had sought.
“OAN’s parent Herring Networks accused Maddow in 2019 of defaming the operation by discussing a report that an OAN journalist was also a contributor to Sputnik, a Russian state-owned news outlet,” reports Huffington Post.
“Maddow said that OAN ‘literally is paid Russian propaganda.’ Herring demanded $10 million in damages.”
Herring’s case was struck down last May, a federal judge declaring that there was “no set of facts that could support a claim for defamation based on Maddow’s statement.”
On Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Allison Goddard of California detailed the costs Herring/OAN must now pay. Her ruling was first reported by the legal website Law & Crime.
But the case is not over, and Herring Networks President Charles Herring is defiant.
He told Law & Crime that his legal team will appeal the ruling and the award in the California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
OAN and Herring face more big lawsuits, growing out of a broadcast that ran on Friday, “when the network aired MyPillow CEO and Trump supporter Mike Lindell’s documentary-style disinformation program which alleged massive electoral fraud during the 2020 presidential election,” Law & Crime says.
The Lindell broadcast, which ran as a paid advertisement, included “a lengthy legal disclaimer seeking to avoid liability for further amplifying false claims made against voting machine vendors and U.S. election officials,” but attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic say they’ll sue anyway.
“‘Nice try’ by OAN, but it definitely does not relieve them of liability,” a Dominion attorney told Law & Crime in an email.
Dominion is also suing Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for $1.3 billion and Smartmatic has filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox News and its hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, along with former Fox commentator Lou Dobbs.