The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with Project Veritas in its defamation lawsuit against CNN, marking a massive win for both the organization and its founder, James O’Keefe.
“If you stay on the bench long enough, you see a lot of things. Still, I never thought I’d see a major news organization downplaying the importance of telling the truth in its broadcasts. But that is what CNN has done,” Judge Ed Carnes stated.
The lawsuit stemmed from CNN’s reporting on Project Veritas’s suspension from Twitter, which the organization claimed mischaracterized the reasons for the ban.
Initially dismissed by a district court, the appeals court found sufficient evidence that CNN may have acted with “actual malice” in its statements, as they did not align with Twitter’s stated reasons for the suspension.
“We had to sue CNN. I had to go to the federal judge in Georgia, and the federal judge ruled against me… I had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not a million, going to the 11th Circuit, wait two years, and get this judgment,” O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe hailed the ruling as a victory for the First Amendment and criticized CNN for its handling of the situation.
“Anna Cabrera told CNN’s national television audience that Twitter had suspended Veritas for publishing and promoting misinformation. But in reality…Twitter had suspended Veritas for a decidedly different reason, for publishing truthful but supposedly private information,” O’Keefe added.
“This is a victory for the First Amendment. This is a victory against fake news,” he said. “Project Veritas Corporation fires me, the chairman, the CEO and founder, in part for doing the very thing that Project Veritas is now taking a victory lap on.”
