Michael Flynn files request for Florida Supreme Court to hear defamation lawsuit vs. Rick Wilson

Former Donald Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has filed an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court to hear his defamation case against Rick Wilson, the former Florida Republican strategist and prominent Trump critic.

Flynn sued Wilson in Sarasota County for defamation after Wilson referred to Flynn in a 2022 tweet as “Putin employee Michael Flynn” and retweeted, “FYI, Mike Flynn is Q.” He sought $50 million in damages and a permanent injunction ordering Wilson to stop defaming him.

Wilson, a Tallahassee resident and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, had moved for summary judgment, contending that both tweets were opinion or rhetorical hyperbole protected by the First Amendment.

In January of last year, a Sarasota County trial judge ruled that Flynn, also a retired lieutenant general, had failed to prove that Wilson had defamed him and granted Wilson’s motion and entered judgment in his favor. Flynn appealed the case, but the Florida 2nd District Court of Appeal (DCA) affirmed the Sarasota County court’s decision in December.

In that opinion, the judges of the Second DCA had written of Wilson’s tweets that “[l]ike 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. As the trial court noted, Wilson’s tweets may not have been polite, and they may not have been fair. But the First Amendment required neither, and we affirm.”

However, in a brief filed with the DCA last Friday, Flynn’s attorney, Jared J. Roberts, wrote, “[t]he decision expressly and directly conflicts with a decision of another District Court of Appeal or of the Supreme Court on the same question of law.”
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Mitch Perry reports via Florida Phoenix, part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email protected].