Chris Riotta, Independent
Former President Donald Trump fears he may face lawsuits for the rest of his life from a barrage of plaintiffs seeking justice for the impact his conspiracy theories had over the last four years and on the 2020 election, according to a new report.
MSNBC Host Joe Scarborough has previously indicated in public comments he was considering filing a lawsuit against the former president after Mr Trump suggested without evidence he “got away with murder” while referring to the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, a former congressional aide who had an undiagnosed heart condition at the time of her passing, and whose death was ruled an accident by the medical examiner.
After his relationship with the former Republican congressman and media personality frayed in 2016, Mr Trump began repeatedly promoting the baseless conspiracy theory that Mr Scarborough killed the staffer — comments that sparked swift backlash from lawmakers, as well as Ms Klausutis’ husband, who called on Twitter to remove the president’s tweets and said he was using his wife’s death “for perceived political gain.”
On Thursday, the Daily Beast reported Mr Scarborough was still considering moving forward with the lawsuit after making his public comments about suing the former president in January, just two days before the inauguration of President Joe Biden, and had been in contact with a prominent attorney in Washington.
And that’s far from the only potential lawsuit to soon befall the former president: Dominion Voting Systems, which previously filed a $1.3 billion defamation suit against his longtime personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and several others, has also indicated it may bring action against Mr Trump for the lies he promoted about its electronic voting machines.
In an interview with CNN last month, Dominion CEO John Poulos said: “Our legal team is looking at, frankly, everyone, and we’re not ruling anybody out.”
At a January press conference announcing the lawsuit against Mr Giuliani, Dominion lawyer Thomas Clare also said the company had “not ruled anyone out” and added: “We are looking very deliberately at the statements and actions of everyone who has been involved in talking about Dominion.”
A legal team for the former president’s campaign received a memo in December last year to preserve all documents related to Dominion and Sidney Powell, a controversial attorney who routinely promoted falsities about the company on Fox News and other news outlets, CNN reported.
Citing an anonymous person who spoke with Mr Trump recently about the lawsuits, the Daily Beast reported that the former president said he feared his apparent enemies would be “suing me for the rest of my life.”
The conspiracy theories came from the top down, with Mr Trump frequently posting falsities to his Twitter page before the platform began labelling his posts containing misinformation last year then ultimately removing his account from the site.
The former president has since been removed from virtually all social media platforms for promoting false conspiracies, which tech executives suggested could foment further violence like the deadly mob seen during the Capitol insurrection on January 6.
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