00:00Well, for more, let's cross to Washington. Former U.S. federal prosecutor Eric Lisan joins us.
00:05Thanks for being with us here on France 24. It's my pleasure to be here.
00:11Eric, what was your first reaction last month when you saw that
00:15the president of France, the sitting president, was filing a lawsuit in Delaware?
00:20That didn't faze me too much. I had not been paying any attention to the story itself,
00:29which basically circulated in sort of extremist right-wing silos. So the decision to bring a
00:37lawsuit might have risked what we call the Streisand effect, named after Barbara Streisand,
00:43calling attention to other people that something which is apparently false, but which doesn't
00:49merit attention. But the attempt to fix it brings more attention to it. But if something reaches
00:56a certain point, and in this era where we have things that go viral very quickly and very powerful
01:03social media outlets that are backed by shady financial interests many times, sometimes the
01:10only way to address it is head-on. And the way the legal system in the United States is structured,
01:15the only person that has standing is somebody that's directly victimized. We've seen cases like
01:21this before. Alex Jones was sued for vicious rumors. He started, and he asserted his fact regarding Sandy
01:28Hook with the mass shooting in Connecticut that affected the victims there. Donald Trump himself was
01:34successfully sued for tens of millions of dollars, not once but twice, by E. Jean Carroll for defamation
01:41relating to a sexual assault he committed on her. So this has happened. And it's not entirely surprising,
01:49because there's no other way to confront these things head-on.
01:52Yeah, that's the question. Is it effective? We saw just last week that the U.S. news outlet Newsmax
02:01settled out of court over a false rumor that voting machines were rigged during an election.
02:10Is it effective? Well, it's all a matter of basic finances. It's basic economics. And that's the
02:20doctrine of punitive damages in the United States. If you're in a jurisdiction, and Delaware is one of
02:26those jurisdictions, that's where the business empire, so to speak, of Candace Owens is located,
02:31that allows punitive damages for this type of action. The goal of the damages is to make a difference.
02:39So it's not limited to the actual damages. It's designed to deter somebody from engaging in this
02:46kind of odious conduct. And the court has to find that it's odious conduct, socially reprehensible
02:52conduct, again. And that's where the finances of the defendants come into play. And the damages can be
03:00very large. On the other hand, it costs a fortune to bring such a case as well. So there's a lot at stake.
03:06And the track record in the United States when a politician sues a commentator?
03:14Well, I cited the Alex Jones case that was successful in establishing liability. It's now
03:23been several years where he's been shuffling between different bankruptcy courts and moving
03:28assets among various corporate entities. But it still substantially constrained him and made a
03:35difference. You don't see him repeating the vicious rumors and adjudicated lies that he told before.
03:41You don't even hear Donald Trump telling the same lies he said before about E. Jean Carroll. He's still
03:47appealing in that case. It's a substantial judgment. If he hadn't been returned to office of the
03:52presidency, it would have bankrupted him. And that's the goal of these things, to make a difference
03:57financially, because that's the most direct way we know of in the old common law legal system
04:05to put the victim as close as possible to the position they were in before the illegal conduct.
04:13We also have one other example. Johnny Depp brought an amazing case a couple years ago
04:17against his former wife, Amber Heard. He was very much a public figure. And he had incredible odds
04:25against him because he'd already lost in Europe in an English court under a very similar set of facts,
04:31but with a widened discovery that was available in a state court in Virginia, he was able to prove
04:38himself that the allegations made by his former wife were false. And he recovered several million millions
04:44of dollars worth of damages. So this happens. And so that brings us back to the case here.
04:51How strong a case does the French president have? He's filed a 200 plus page indictment chock full of details
05:02and exhibits and direct quotes from Candace Owens herself, which seems to lay out a fairly strong case.
05:11I think on the merits, it's going to be a very difficult case to to breach. She might have to resort to the famous
05:19New York Times versus Sullivan defense, which is controversial in that it makes it harder to as a public
05:28official to recover damages because you have to show that the defamatory statements were made with
05:33reckless knowledge of their falsity. And and that has to be overcome. But based on the indictment itself
05:43and the amount of detail and evidence that appears in that indictment, at least superficially, it all has to be
05:50introduced in court, of course, and with witnesses. So it'll be a huge spectacle if it's a trial, an enormous
05:56spectacle. But if that happens, it looks like it's straightforward if everybody testifies as they are in the indictment,
06:03that that Candace Owens knew she was making false statements and that she should be held liable for this and that she did it for
06:10financial gain. And so therefore, the damages must be sufficient to deter her or anybody else in that
06:16position from repeating this conduct. It could take years to play out there.
06:21And in the meantime, she's been, I guess, making more financial gain since she's basically talking about
06:29this a lot on her video posts. How much traction is this story getting where you are?
06:35Well, not as much as in France. It gets traction in the conspiracy, you know, the right wing medias,
06:45which tend to be siloed off. They have large audiences, but people outside those audiences tend
06:52not to to pay attention to them for the reasons that the stories are often like this, apparently completely
07:00false and fabricated. And it does damage to harm them. And it's very hard to to pierce these social
07:07media bubbles, even though they're large. So I would not say that in the United States, the story has
07:14had anywhere near the traction that it has had in France. I mean, most Americans couldn't even tell
07:19you who the president of France was, for one thing. But the U.S. courts are in the only place where
07:26this kind of a remedy can be sought that allows these types of damages and that allows what we
07:32call discovery in civil cases through the taking of depositions prior to the trial, the filing of
07:39interrogatories and subpoenas to third parties. No other legal system allows such discretion to the
07:46litigants to pursue it. And again, as I said, the cost is is is outrageous, is going to be in the
07:53millions of dollars for sure. But it does allow for a resolution of this, even though it may take time.
07:59Eric Leeson, one final question. It's 2025 now and the digital age is really in hyperdrive when it comes
08:09to spewing these conspiracy theories. With hindsight, would it have been a good idea for Barack Obama to
08:18sue over this birther theory that Donald Trump was among those who peddled for a while,
08:23that he was not born in Hawaii, but born abroad in Kenya?
08:29You know, that was a different era. The social media atmosphere and environment was not as powerful
08:35as it is now. The platforms were not as well established. There were the beginnings of it,
08:41for sure. But it was really in that 2016 election that followed Obama that the power of these was
08:48demonstrated as it probably swayed the election through foreign interference efforts, as well as
08:56micro targeting using the Facebook platform, using other social media platforms in a way ruthlessly
09:05designed to accomplish a certain goal. And I think people were not aware before then of what could
09:12be accomplished. So for Obama, well before that, he probably did the right thing at that time. But if
09:20this was today, it might be a different story. And, you know, we see this also, look at how Gavin Newsom
09:27is attacking Trump. He's using the same methods and means, and that may be the only way left to
09:34to establish the truth, ironically. Eric Lisson, so many thanks for joining us from Washington.
09:42Always my pleasure. There's more coming up. You're watching France 24.
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