A federal judge has thrown out Donald Trump's $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president claimed the network's description of his election fraud as the "big lie" associated him with Adolf Hitler.
In a ruling late on Friday night, U.S. Judge Raag Singhal, who was nominated by Trump in 2019, said CNN's words were opinion, not fact, and therefore could not be the subject of a defamation claim, reports Reuters.
"CNN's statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory," wrote Singhal, who sits in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, near Trump's home at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson said: "We agree with the highly respected judge's findings that CNN's statements about President Trump are repugnant. CNN will be held responsible for their wrongful mistreatment of President Trump and his supporters."
The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2022, highlighted five instances in which CNN either published stories or aired comments referring to Trump's assertions about the 2020 election as his "big lie." The phrase is also associated with the Nazi regime's use of propaganda.
The wording, the lawsuit said, constituted "a deliberate effort by CNN to propagate to its audience an association between the plaintiff and one of the most repugnant figures in modern history."
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