A nettled Hillary Clinton on Thursday lashed out at Fox News, offering the potential threat of a lawsuit over its coverage of a court filing from Special Counsel John Durham.
Last week, Durham, who is investigating the origins of claims that former President Donald Trump’s campaign had links with Russia, alleged that lawyers for the Clinton campaign hired a technology company to infiltrate computer servers that belonged to Trump Tower and later the White House, and lay a false trail that would implicate the Trump campaign of having contacts with Russia, according to Fox News.
Clinton, former Secretary of State who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump, on Wednesday referred to the filing and its coverage as a “fake scandal.”
On Thursday, as she addressed the New York State Democratic convention, Clinton – while avoiding mention of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose virtues she extolled before the convention in 2018 – teed off on Trump and Fox News.
“By the way, they’ve been coming after me again lately, in case you might have noticed. It’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get,” Clinton said, according to The Hill.
“So now, his accountants have fired him and investigations draw closer to him, and right on cue the noise machine gets turned up, doesn’t it? Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again. And as an aside, they’re getting awfully close to actual malice in their attacks.”
Hillary Clinton calls out Fox News for propagating conspiracy theories about her as investigations draw closer to Trump:
"They're getting close to actual malice in their attacks." pic.twitter.com/b4jDVaQbKX
— The Recount (@therecount) February 17, 2022
Fox News host Sean Hannity laughed off her comments.
“It’s called discovery, and it’s called depositions,” he said, according to Business Insider.
“Bring it on. Malice? Really? It’s called news. Hillary, we invite you to bring it on. It’s from a legal filing we quoted exactly from the filing that was put in federal court,” Hannity said.
Actual malice, according to The New York Times, means “displaying a reckless disregard for the truth or publishing information known to be false.”
The Times recently won a lawsuit filed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who claimed the newspaper libeled her.
In the aftermath of that suit, David A. Logan, a professor at the Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island, made a comment that could apply to any Clinton lawsuit as well.
“If you’re a public figure, you basically lose these cases,” Logan said.
Hannity had ridiculed Clinton on Wednesday, according to Fox News.
“It’s another vast right-wing conspiracy. At least according to the always honest, always truthful, always ethical Hillary Rodham Clinton,” he said.
“The two-time presidential loser broke her silence and announced that the Durham filing, which all but accuses her campaign of, you know, kind of looking at the other campaign — to say it politely — was fake news pushed forward by Fox. Really? According to Hillary, this is just another case of her enemies trying to smear her sterling reputation.”
Hannity assessed Clinton’s score at telling the truth.
“Don’t worry if there’s someone you can really trust to give you it straight; it’s Hillary Clinton, right?” Hannity asked.
“Remember the same Hillary who lied about the private server, the same one that lied about classified material on that private server? The same Hillary that lied about whether she wiped the server clean with like a cloth? The same Hillary that lied about Benghazi and about that trip to Bosnia under sniper fire. The same Hillary Clinton who lied about Whitewater and her husband’s many sexual transgressions. Let’s jar your memory, shall we?
“And given what we know, ask yourself this question: Are you going to trust an official court filing from a special prosecutor? Or do you trust Hillary Clinton? I think the answer could not be more obvious,” Hannity said.
