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Judge tosses frivolous lawsuit by heiress Sulome Anderson seeking to destroy The Grayzone
MAX BLUMENTHAL AND BEN NORTON·JUNE 29, 2021
Entitled heiress Sulome Anderson waged a McCarthyite lawfare campaign to destroy The Grayzone. We can now expose her and the powerful forces behind her deranged legal assault.
“Because of the lawsuits my family won against Iran, I had all the money in the world to spend on drugs, and I made some dealers a lot of money.” –Sulome Anderson, 2016
“I’ll destroy him
” –Sulome Anderson on defendant Ben Norton, 2017
“I’m not stupid enough to take it this far without legal grounds.” –Sulome Anderson on her plans to sue The Grayzone, 2018
The District of Columbia Superior Court has rejected a frivolous, million-dollar lawsuit claiming libel, defamation, and tortious conspiracy filed by writer Sulome Anderson against The Grayzone’s editor Max Blumenthal and assistant editor Ben Norton.
Judge William M. Jackson’s June 16, 2021 decision put an end to the entitled heiress’ three-year-long campaign to smear and bankrupt The Grayzone with the help of a powerful DC lawyer closely linked to the Israel lobby.
It was a humiliating resolution to a legal assault that threatened to impose a serious chilling effect on independent media and press freedom had it been successful.
Sulome’s suit was triggered by a May 2018 article for The Grayzone by Norton, entitled “Sulome Anderson Admits Her Supposed Hezbollah Source Is ‘Incredibly Unreliable,’” which showed how she published blatant misinformation falsely alleging Iranian attacks on Israel-occupied territory that, if true, could have triggered a regional war.
A clearly embarrassed Sulome retaliated against the report – which consisted primarily of her own admission that her sources were not credible – with a Twitter tirade defaming The Grayzone as a “Russian propaganda conspiracy site.”
She subsequently taunted and threatened William Moran, Blumenthal’s friend and long-time personal attorney, with the coming lawsuit: “I wish I could see your faces when your client is served and you see the letterhead. You’re playing with the big boys now, Moran.”
Sulome Anderson tweet defamation Blumenthal Norton
In a Medium post announcing her legal assault, Anderson attempted to obscure her petty vendetta by casting herself as a noble defender of the free press and “real” journalists threatened by evil dictators.
“This lawsuit is about something much more important than my feelings,” she claimed. “It’s about fighting a coordinated effort to attack, discredit and endanger journalists whose work counters a certain political line… And it’s about pushing back against the forces that would silence anyone who presents inconvenient truths to the public.”
On Twitter, meanwhile, Sulome declared, “This [lawsuit] has very little to do with defaming me,” conceding her ulterior motive to muzzle and destroy The Grayzone.
The malicious quality of the wealthy plaintiff’s complaint prompted an exasperated statement by Judge Jackson at the start of our July 2019 hearing. “I don’t think anyone expected to see a journalist using libel law to try to sue another journalist in a local court,” the judge commented.
Jackson went on to reject the allegation that formed the heart of Sulome’s legal assault: that we had engaged in a nefarious conspiracy to defame her with a collection of anonymous Twitter accounts with which we had no connection. If a judge had validated such an absurd claim, Sulome’s legal assault could have made social media users liable for tweets by anonymous users simply because they shared similar opinions or ideology.
In a statement to The Grayzone, our legal defenders at Hawgood & Moran Law described Sulome’s complaint as “a Trojan Horse that would have ended the free and open exchange of ideas on social media.”
“Sulome Anderson reported a false casus belli based on an admittedly ‘incredibly unreliable source,’” our counsel explained, “then unleashed a venerable, or at least very expensive, DC law firm in an attempt to effectively banish not only social media use but also having (alleged) thoughts that her attorney would deem controversial.”
To carry out her vendetta, Sulome enlisted Stuart H. Newberger, a lawfare specialist who had previously represented her father, former Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson, in his lawsuit against the Iranian government, which he held responsible for his kidnapping in Beirut, Lebanon in 1985.
A member of the Israel Practice of one of the largest corporate law firms in Washington DC, Crowell & Moring, Newberger has spearheaded numerous legal actions extracting massive punitive judgments against designated enemy states and accused terrorist groups.
In 2000, he won $341 million on Terry Anderson’s behalf against an Iranian government that did not appear in court. In her memoir, Sulome wrote that the multimillion-dollar payout her family received from the lawsuit guaranteed her “all the money in the world to spend on drugs, and I made some dealers a lot of money.”
Sulome’s frivolous lawsuit was also boosted by some powerful friends in the corporate media. CNN host Jake Tapper promoted it, as did New York Magazine’s in-house neoliberal enforcer, Jonathan Chait, who smeared us as “domestic extremists.”
Jonathan Chait Sulome Anderson lawsuit extremists
As she readied her lawfare campaign, Sulome flaunted her wealth and the high-powered legal attack dog she planned to sic on us, while disparaging our legal counsel as an “ambulance chaser” and “dimestore bullshit.”
“I have plenty of resources,” she boasted in a tweet directed at Moran, and “I’m determined to use them to my full advantage to teach your client a lesson.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/06/29/lawsuit-sulome-anderson-hezbollah/
more at link
Judge tosses frivolous lawsuit by heiress Sulome Anderson seeking to destroy The Grayzone
MAX BLUMENTHAL AND BEN NORTON·JUNE 29, 2021
Entitled heiress Sulome Anderson waged a McCarthyite lawfare campaign to destroy The Grayzone. We can now expose her and the powerful forces behind her deranged legal assault.
“Because of the lawsuits my family won against Iran, I had all the money in the world to spend on drugs, and I made some dealers a lot of money.” –Sulome Anderson, 2016
“I’ll destroy him
” –Sulome Anderson on defendant Ben Norton, 2017“I’m not stupid enough to take it this far without legal grounds.” –Sulome Anderson on her plans to sue The Grayzone, 2018
The District of Columbia Superior Court has rejected a frivolous, million-dollar lawsuit claiming libel, defamation, and tortious conspiracy filed by writer Sulome Anderson against The Grayzone’s editor Max Blumenthal and assistant editor Ben Norton.
Judge William M. Jackson’s June 16, 2021 decision put an end to the entitled heiress’ three-year-long campaign to smear and bankrupt The Grayzone with the help of a powerful DC lawyer closely linked to the Israel lobby.
It was a humiliating resolution to a legal assault that threatened to impose a serious chilling effect on independent media and press freedom had it been successful.
Sulome’s suit was triggered by a May 2018 article for The Grayzone by Norton, entitled “Sulome Anderson Admits Her Supposed Hezbollah Source Is ‘Incredibly Unreliable,’” which showed how she published blatant misinformation falsely alleging Iranian attacks on Israel-occupied territory that, if true, could have triggered a regional war.
A clearly embarrassed Sulome retaliated against the report – which consisted primarily of her own admission that her sources were not credible – with a Twitter tirade defaming The Grayzone as a “Russian propaganda conspiracy site.”
She subsequently taunted and threatened William Moran, Blumenthal’s friend and long-time personal attorney, with the coming lawsuit: “I wish I could see your faces when your client is served and you see the letterhead. You’re playing with the big boys now, Moran.”
Sulome Anderson tweet defamation Blumenthal Norton
In a Medium post announcing her legal assault, Anderson attempted to obscure her petty vendetta by casting herself as a noble defender of the free press and “real” journalists threatened by evil dictators.
“This lawsuit is about something much more important than my feelings,” she claimed. “It’s about fighting a coordinated effort to attack, discredit and endanger journalists whose work counters a certain political line… And it’s about pushing back against the forces that would silence anyone who presents inconvenient truths to the public.”
On Twitter, meanwhile, Sulome declared, “This [lawsuit] has very little to do with defaming me,” conceding her ulterior motive to muzzle and destroy The Grayzone.
The malicious quality of the wealthy plaintiff’s complaint prompted an exasperated statement by Judge Jackson at the start of our July 2019 hearing. “I don’t think anyone expected to see a journalist using libel law to try to sue another journalist in a local court,” the judge commented.
Jackson went on to reject the allegation that formed the heart of Sulome’s legal assault: that we had engaged in a nefarious conspiracy to defame her with a collection of anonymous Twitter accounts with which we had no connection. If a judge had validated such an absurd claim, Sulome’s legal assault could have made social media users liable for tweets by anonymous users simply because they shared similar opinions or ideology.
In a statement to The Grayzone, our legal defenders at Hawgood & Moran Law described Sulome’s complaint as “a Trojan Horse that would have ended the free and open exchange of ideas on social media.”
“Sulome Anderson reported a false casus belli based on an admittedly ‘incredibly unreliable source,’” our counsel explained, “then unleashed a venerable, or at least very expensive, DC law firm in an attempt to effectively banish not only social media use but also having (alleged) thoughts that her attorney would deem controversial.”
To carry out her vendetta, Sulome enlisted Stuart H. Newberger, a lawfare specialist who had previously represented her father, former Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson, in his lawsuit against the Iranian government, which he held responsible for his kidnapping in Beirut, Lebanon in 1985.
A member of the Israel Practice of one of the largest corporate law firms in Washington DC, Crowell & Moring, Newberger has spearheaded numerous legal actions extracting massive punitive judgments against designated enemy states and accused terrorist groups.
In 2000, he won $341 million on Terry Anderson’s behalf against an Iranian government that did not appear in court. In her memoir, Sulome wrote that the multimillion-dollar payout her family received from the lawsuit guaranteed her “all the money in the world to spend on drugs, and I made some dealers a lot of money.”
Sulome’s frivolous lawsuit was also boosted by some powerful friends in the corporate media. CNN host Jake Tapper promoted it, as did New York Magazine’s in-house neoliberal enforcer, Jonathan Chait, who smeared us as “domestic extremists.”
Jonathan Chait Sulome Anderson lawsuit extremists
As she readied her lawfare campaign, Sulome flaunted her wealth and the high-powered legal attack dog she planned to sic on us, while disparaging our legal counsel as an “ambulance chaser” and “dimestore bullshit.”
“I have plenty of resources,” she boasted in a tweet directed at Moran, and “I’m determined to use them to my full advantage to teach your client a lesson.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/06/29/lawsuit-sulome-anderson-hezbollah/
more at link
