Dan Bongino's Defamation Suit BACKFIRES And Costs Him $32,000

Right wing commentator Dan Bongino sued The Daily Beast for defamation after they ran a story about his show for NRATV ending a while back. Bongino had argued that the Beast misrepresented what actually happened, even though they added clarification from Bongino to the article. The court wasn't convinced that Bongino had a case, and he was hit with an Anti-SLAPP judgement that now forced him to pay The Daily Beast $32,000. Farron Cousins explains what happened.

Don't forget to like, comment, and share! And subscribe to stay connected!

Connect with Farron on Twitter

*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Right-wing personality. Dan Bongino found out the hard way that unfortunately, for him, not everything is defamation. See Bongino had actually sued the daily beast. Actually this was a couple years ago because they ran a story about how his little gig on NRA TV was coming to an end. And the article, by the way, made it clear that it was because of financial decisions on behalf of the NRA. Not because Bongino was necessarily fired or because he said, screw it, I'm leaving. It was, Hey, NRA is having some money issues. They're cutting NRATV. And the daily beast actually reached out to Bongino for a statement on the article, which he did not give until after the article was published. And then the daily beast went ahead and said, okay, you gave us the statement. They issued an update to the story, but it still wasn't.

Good enough. So Bongino who resides in Florida sued the daily beast for defamation among other things. I actually, uh, where is it? Let me see here. Defamation commercial disparagement and violation of Florida's deceptive and unfair practices or unfair trade practices act a lot of charges there. Right? Well, the judges decided there's no defamation here because as I mentioned, the daily beast made it clear that they don't know exactly what took place other than you're not doing your show anymore. They even encourage readers. Don't make assumptions about any of this. So not only did Dan Bongino lose this court case because it was summarily dismissed, but then they said, you know what else? By the way, this lawsuit, because it has no merit runs a foul of Florida's anti-SLAPP laws, which means Dan, you have to pay the daily Beast's legal costs, which amount to just a little under $32,000.

So Bon Gino did try to do a little bit of legal maneuvering after that was decided. And the court said, yeah, not happening just because you don't want the case to go anywhere. Now doesn't mean you didn't already do it. They incurred the fees, you gotta do it. You gotta pay. You lost. It's very clearly in violation of these anti-SLAPP laws. Nothing you can do. And then of course, he tried to object saying, well, well maybe I shouldn't have done it in Florida, not yet, but she did so, oh, well pay up Dan. Here's the thing. And you've heard me talk about this before, because this is something that is happening for more frequently. Trust me, I know from experience, but you have, right-wingers not necessarily bond Gino, but trust me, there's plenty of others out there that are trying to weaponize defamation lawsuits or at the very least the threat of defamation lawsuits.

Uh, so far this year, by the way, uh, I've been hit with several, uh, all of them dismissed, all of them, you know, uh, actually dead before they even went anywhere other than a threat or a filing that was, you know, later on done, but that's what they're doing. And again, I'm not even saying Bon Gina was doing this here. He may have felt like he had a legitimate claim for defamation, but you know, the, the judge fell differently here, but there are others on the right again that I have personal experience with that will do whatever they can to shut down any criticism, including the threat of a lawsuit. You know, luckily I know lots of very amazing lawyers, so none of it has actually gone anywhere, but that's, what's happening here in the United States today. They don't want criticism. They don't want people analyzing what they're doing, even though they're public figures.

So they try to slap these defamation suits out there to get people to shut up. And you know, for a lot of people, especially again, I got a lot of legal connections from working in the legal industry for over 17 years. Other folks don't have that. And other folks may not even have enough money to, you know, hire a lawyer. I know if I had to hire one on my own, probably couldn't do it. And that's why the threat is very real.