Ryan Nicol
Retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn flopped after filing a defamation suit against Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson for $50 million. Now, an appeals court is upholding the lower court decision in favor of Wilson.
Judges Susan Rothstein-Youakim was joined by Judges Darryl Casanueva and Morris Silberman ruling in favor of Wilson on Wednesday in the 2nd District Court of Appeal. Flynn at the lower court level said two social media posts — one in which Wilson called him “Putin employee Mike Flynn” and another in which Wilson retweeted a post saying, “FYI, Mike Flynn is Q” — constituted defamation and asked for a massive sum in damages.
That case failed almost before it began, with Wilson winning on a motion for summary judgment by arguing the statements were opinion or rhetorical hyperbole and did not exhibit “actual malice,” a standard required to be met when a public figure alleges defamation.
In an opinion upholding the lower court’s decision, the Judges called Flynn a “quintessential public figure” and referenced reporting tying Flynn to Russia and the QAnon movement to explain the context of Wilson’s statements.
Wilson’s post calling Flynn a “Putin employee” came in response to a letter from Flynn on the day Russia invaded Ukraine, arguing that the White House “ignored and laughed at Putin’s legitimate security concerns and legitimate ethnic problems in Ukraine. We have yet to hear from the President of the United States an explanation of U.S. national security interests, instead we continue to demonize Russia.”
“Flynn wants us to isolate Wilson’s statement from its context and focus instead on what it typically means to be an ’employee.’ And stripped from the rest of the tweet, Wilson’s statement may indeed appear to be making a factual claim about Flynn’s economic relationship with Putin,” the opinion said.
“But that is not what a reasonable reader of Wilson’s Twitter feed would think Wilson was trying to communicate. Rather, whether Flynn gets a regular paycheck from the Russian Federation — like Putin’s secretary perhaps — just isn’t Wilson’s point.”
As for the “Q” post, the court slapped down Flynn for failing to file an affidavit “to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Wilson entertained ‘serious doubts’ about the accuracy of the articles stating that at least some believers in the QAnon conspiracy think that Flynn is Q.”
“Thus, we agree with the trial court that the statement ‘FYI, Mike Flynn is Q’ is nonactionable rhetorical hyperbole or opinion,” the opinion continued. “Indeed, on this record, ‘Flynn is Q’ becomes just another example of generally nonactionable name calling that lacks a verifiable factual core.”
Flynn’s appeal also made a technical argument regarding a purported error in the lower court’s ruling. But the court too rejected that argument before closing.
“We have the privilege of living in a country with a ‘profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks,'” the opinion said.
“Like it or not, such attacks are a characteristic feature of our democracy — regardless of the political persuasion of the speaker and regardless of the political persuasion of the public figure on the receiving end of that speech.”
Flynn will also be responsible for Wilson’s appellate fees, per an order from the appeals court.
