Fox News Legal Analyst: Trump Campaign’s Lawsuit Against NY Times Is ‘Dead on Arrival’

Last week the Donald Trump campaign sued the New York Times over an opinion piece titled “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo.”

On Fox News today, MediaBuzz host Howard Kurtz spoke with network legal analyst Mercedes Colwin, who rather directly said the lawsuit is “DOA — dead on arrival.”

“When you have a libel case, especially against an op-ed editor, the very nature of an op-ed is that it’s an opinion,” she said. “There’s lots of well-settled law that says when you are expressing an opinion, you are devoid of making a defamatory statement. So even when the president said at that press conference ‘well, they got the opinion wrong,’ by his own admission you’re talking and criticizing an opinion. The case law is very clear. When you express an opinion, you’re not actually making a statement that’s defamatory.”

Kurtz said the opinion may well be wrong, but then asked why the Trump campaign would want to open themselves up to “depositions and discovery on Russia.”

Colwin doubted it would even get to that stage, emphasizing again that while there may be some nuance depending on the specifics, opinion is not libel.

“We’re talking about an op-ed editor who simply said, ‘This is my opinion, this is how I see it.'”

You can watch above, via Fox News.