Twitter files journalist Matt Taibbi filed a $10 million libel lawsuit against Democratic California Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove on Thursday after she accused him of being a “serial sexual harasser.”
Kamlager-Dove made the accusations Tuesday during a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing and later amplified them on social media. The congresswoman’s claims are “demonstrably false and were made with actual malice,” Taibbi’s lawsuit states.
“There is not much a person like me can say to a member of Congress hiding behind the protections of the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution,” Taibbi wrote in a Substack post.
“One can however respond to a member arrogant enough to repeat those claims on social media,” he continued. “I’ve now done so, in the form of a $10 million libel lawsuit filed today in a New Jersey federal court.”
Kamlager-Dove alleged during the hearing on the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” that Republicans were “elevating a serial sexual harasser as their star witness” to distract “from the dumpster fire this administration is pursuing.”
Taibbi’s lawsuit states the Democratic lawmaker relied on “unverified, decades-old satirical content that had been widely discredited by prior legal action and public corrections—corrections of which she, as a public official with access to such information, was undoubtedly aware.”
“Defendant’s decision to republish the statements on X and her website, outside her legislative duties, further demonstrates an intent to harm Plaintiff’s reputation in his home state and beyond, rather than a good-faith engagement in legislative debate,” the suit continues.
Taibbi’s attorneys and Rep. Kamlager-Dove did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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