‘Bring It On’: Hannity Dares Hillary Clinton to Sue Fox News for Defamation
Hillary Clinton delivered a speech to the New York State Democratic Convention on Thursday and took direct aim at Fox News.
Her remarks did not go unnoticed by Sean Hannity later that night.
Clinton told attendees not to get “distracted” by “some new right-wing lie on Fox or Facebook.”
She was referring to allegations from conservatives her 2016 campaign had “spied” on Donald Trump. That narrative has figured prominently on Fox News and FoxNews.com, the latter of which ran an article stating that a motion filed in federal court “found” that Clinton’s campaign paid someone to “infiltrate” servers at Trump Tower and the White House.
However, “infiltrate” doesn’t appear in the motion. As the article notes much later on, “infiltrate” was actually used by a former Trump official not involved in the case.
“Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again,” she said. “And as an aside, they’re getting awfully close to actual malice in their attacks.”
“Actual malice” is a legal standard a public figure must show when bringing a libel case against a defendant. The Supreme Court has ruled that “actual malice” means a defendant made a defamatory statement “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
Hannity addressed Clinton’s comments and urged her to “bring it on.”
He teed up the relevant clip by telling viewers the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee “had a few choice words for this news channel” and also Trump.
Afterward, Hannity dared Clinton to sue the network.
“It’s called discovery and it’s called depositions,” he said. “Bring it on. Malice? Really? It’s called news. Hillary, we invite you to bring it on. It’s from a legal filing we quoted exactly from the filing that was put in federal court.”
Hannity wasn’t the only person on a Fox channel to bring up the pretrial phase of discovery on Thursday after Clinton hinted at a potential lawsuit. Earlier on Fox Business Network, conservative writer Byron York wondered what that would look like in such an extraordinary case.
“Now, I can’t imagine she would actually sue a publication,” York said. “Can you imagine the discovery in a case like that?” York said.
Watch above via Fox News.
