The New York Times is firing back against the far-right “paramilitary group” that accused the paper of defamation, filing a new lawsuit after the organization's $100 million case was thrown out of court.
In a complaint that was filed in New York this week, the Times is suing 1st Amendment Praetorian for “reasonable costs, attorney’s fees, and disbursements pursuant to New York Civil Rights Law” while noting that the paper incurred at least $50,000 in legal fees defending against the organization’s “meritless” litigation. It is a lawsuit under anti-SLAPP provisions designed to protect First Amendment rights.
“Judge [Mary Kay] Vyskocil's careful opinion granting our motion to dismiss recognized that the claims against The Times were meritless,” a New York Times spokesperson told The Independent. “New York's anti-SLAPP law therefore requires that 1st Amendment Praetorian pay the costs of The Times's defense. Fee shifting is an important deterrent to frivolous lawsuits against the press and The Times looks forward to recovering its costs.”
The Independent has reached out to the 1st Amendment Praetorian for comment.
1st Amendment Praetorian, otherwise known as 1AP, initially brought its lawsuit against the Times in January 2023 in response to several articles the outlet published about the scrutiny the group had received surrounding the January 6 Capitol attack. These reports were in relation to the House committee that investigated January 6 issuing a subpoena to 1AP and its founder Robert Patrick Lewis in November 2021.
“The subpoena compelled 1AP to produce documents pertaining to the events leading up to and transpiring on that day. The Committee specifically sought documents related to the security that 1AP had provided to allies of President Trump—including Stop the Steal campaign organizer Ali Alexander and Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn—as well as various social media posts made by 1AP on or around January 6, among other materials,” the Times noted in its complaint this week. “The subpoena also compelled Mr. Lewis to appear for a deposition before the Committee.”
Following the subpoena of Lewis, the Times published an article in January 2022 that reported on the close ties 1AP had with allies of Donald Trump who were looking to undermine confidence in the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.
“By their own account, members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian helped to funnel data on purported election fraud to lawyers suing to overturn the vote count,” Times reporter Alan Feuer reported in that article. “They guarded celebrities like Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, at ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies, where huge crowds gathered to demand that Mr. Trump remain in office. And they supported an explosive proposal to persuade the president to declare an emergency and seize the country’s voting machines in a bid to stay in power.”
In subsequent articles by Feuer later that year, it was noted that 1AP had provided security for Flynn amid Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, adding that the group also helped former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell gather open-source intelligence about claims of election fraud. Additionally, citing the House committee’s description of the organization, 1AP was described as “far-right,” “extremist,” and a “paramilitary group” similar to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
1AP filed a $100 million lawsuit in January 2023 against the Times and Feuer, alleging that the articles and social media posts sharing the pieces defamed the group by “stating or implying to their Twitter followers and readers that 1AP ‘stormed the Capitol’ on January 6, 2021.”
The paper would reply in court that none of the social media posts presented in the complaint mentioned 1AP and that the articles in question never stated that the group stormed the Capitol. 1AP would later file an amended complaint that alleged the Times made 24 materially false statements about the group, once again seeking $100 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
In March of this year, the court granted the Times’ motion to dismiss the complaint with prejudice. In its ruling, the court stated that 1AP not only failed to sufficiently show that the Times published any alleged defamatory statements with actual malice, but also didn’t show “any level of specificity” with its defamation claim. Beyond that, many of the supposed defamatory statements the group highlighted were not “of or concerning” 1AP, with the group also failing to even show that many of the statements were false.
Meanwhile, at the time of its lawsuit, Rolling Stone suggested that 1AP was taking on a highly litigious stance in an effort to distance itself from other right-wing organizations and figures associated with the Capitol attack. Instead, the organization was attempting to rebrand itself as a “civil liberties group” and “non-partisan.”
“The litigation is part of a pattern of high-dollar defamation suits brought by 1AP that are ostensibly attempting to clear its reputation,” the magazine reported in February 2023. “Seen in another light, the lawsuits present a vivid irony: They are filed by an organization that presents itself as a protector of first amendment rights, against parties who’ve leveraged their own freedom of the press to raise concerns about 1st Amendment Praetorian.”
Rolling Stone added: “The court blitz complicates efforts to scrutinize 1AP, which the Jan. 6 Committee’s final report describes as a ‘paramilitary group,’ and whose founder Lewis has touted the need for a ‘second American revolution.’”
Citing New York’s anti-SLAPP law, which gives publishers increased protections against frivolous lawsuits and allows them to recover damages incurred in defending against those complaints, the Times is now demanding that 1AP pay its attorneys’ fees in the dismissed case.
“The Times incurred more than $50,000 in legal fees and costs to defend against 1AP’s lawsuit that had no basis in law or fact,” this week’s complaint alleges, adding: “The District Court’s opinion makes clear that 1AP both commenced and continued its Action without a substantial basis in fact and law.”
The New York Times pushing back against a Trump-adjacent organization over what was ultimately deemed a frivolous and baseless complaint comes at a time when the current president has used the courts to bully media companies with his own “meritless” lawsuits.
Trump, who is currently suing the Wall Street Journal and its owner Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion over a Jeffrey Epstein article, recently obtained a $16 million settlement from Paramount in his lawsuit over a CBS News interview with Kamala Harris.
That settlement – which was similar in the amount Disney paid Trump to settle his ABC News lawsuit – came shortly before his administration approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, which also came just days after CBS announced it was cancelling the late-night show of outspoken Trump critic Stephen Colbert.
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