Hillary Clinton took aim at Fox News on Thursday, claiming the network was getting “awfully close to actual malice” following its reporting that her campaign tried to “infiltrate” servers at Trump Tower and the White House. Her remarks ruffled feathers over at Fox News, where Sean Hannity challenged her to sue the network for defamation later that night.
“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 from the court.”
Hannity was referring to accusations by John Durham, a former U.S. attorney given what amounted to a midnight appointment to Special Counselor during the final weeks of Trump’s presidency to “investigate” the origins of Department of Justice’s investigation of his ties to Russia.
What happened is that Fox News – including Hannity – and multiple other conservative outlets and eventually, former President Donald Trump, misrepresented court paperwork Durham filed last week. In the Fox News/Trump version of events, Hillary’s campaign somehow “infiltrated” and “spied” on Trump in 2016 and even after he entered the White House. Suffice to say, not only did Durham not actually specifically say this,it also isn’t even remotely true.
The claims in the filing have also been largely debunked by theThe New York TimesandNBC News.
While speaking at the New York State Democratic Convention on Thursday, Clinton spoke about the claims, telling her audience that “we can’t get distracted — whether it’s by the latest culture war nonsense, or some right wing lie on Fox or Facebook.”
Clinton continued, “By the way, they’ve been coming after me again lately in case you might have noticed. It’s funny. The more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get.”
“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 used as a legal standard for a public figure to sue a defendant for libel. According to the Supreme Court, 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.”
Ross Lincoln contributed to this report.