A federal judge ruled against Donald Trump Jr. and said on Wednesday that the defamation lawsuit over his tweets can carry on.
The lawsuit originated from the comments that Trump Jr. made against Don Blankenship, a failed Constitution Party member who was running for a West Virginia Senate seat in 2018.
Trump Jr. urged his followers on Twitter that they should vote for someone else other than Blankenship, but Trump Jr. referred to this candidate as a “felon” on the social media platform.
Yes, Blankenship had been found guilty of a misdemeanor that dealt with a 2010 coal-mining disaster, but he has never been convicted of a felony. So no, Mr. Blankenship could not be called a felon. Mr. Blankenship did serve a year in jail over the conviction, however. Apparently, the politically-correct goons are out in full force on behalf of Mr. Blankenship.
This prompted Mr. Blankenship to file a civil lawsuit in federal court against Donald Trump Jr. where he accused him of defamation, civil conspiracy, and false light invasion of privacy.
“The defamation of Mr. Blankenship as a ‘felon’ has so smeared his reputation that he has been prevented from pursuing other businesses and opportunities and generating similar returns of billions of dollars,” the lawsuit against Trump Jr. read.
In his motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Trump Jr. argued that the statement he made was just conveyed as an opinion and not meant to be conveyed as a fact and that the tweet had been sent to a random user on Twitter, not Blankenship.
However, the court refused this argument and allowed the lawsuit to continue.
West Virginia Judge John Copenhaver was a Gerald Ford appointee, and he noted in his decision that Trump Jr.’s tweet showed that he himself knew that the accusation against Blankenship was a false one.
“Based on this article that Trump, Jr. himself cites within his own quote tweet,” Copenhaver wrote, “there is a plausible inference that he had knowledge of the plaintiff’s conviction history in association with the mine explosion, and in particular that the conviction was a misdemeanor, not a felony.”
However, it could be argued that Trump Jr.’s tweet was nothing more than an “exaggeration” that offered “colorful rhetoric” and that his speech is protected by the First Amendment. Of course, when we’re talking about anything against the Trump family, those rights go out the window.
Copenhaver disagreed with that argument, and he is allowing this civil lawsuit to proceed to trial.