BlairWitch749
Banned
What if George Bush sued CBS for the Dan Rather 60 minutes forged documents scandal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
Why should he go to court? The story went nowhere, the documents are known forgeries and CBS was humiliated while Dan Rather was destroyed and Bush didn't have to do anything to make all this happen.
Orville, getting Jerry Killian to testify many years after his death would be a bit of a challenge.![]()
There is a good reason elected officials do not sue for slander or libel. Under Supreme Court standards, a public official has to prove actual malice. This is almost impossible to prove do so they do not sue.
AH
I know there has been unfair press coverage here and there but this incident was remarkable. I figure Bush might have been too proud to bother with something like that and CBS did a rather thurough job of destorying themselves anyway... but maybe Cheney could talk him into it, see it as a way to punish the media that was being so critical of him over the Iraq war
If a judge kept it to just was the CBS report a defamation of Bush's character and a libelous event and didn't allow it to go off into other tangers he could win and really embarass CBS
This is what Bush would NOT want.
If Bush sued, expect Killian and other TX NG people to testify under oath that Bush missed his NG duties (which was well documented before CBS's report). Further, you'd get ex-Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes testifying (again) that he used his influence to get Bush into the NG. (As he did earlier...and as the BBC reported in 1999...)
You can't sue someone for slander. Slander is a criminal offense, and I'm pretty certain that it's a felony in most states, and must proceed only with the indictment of a grand jury. Second, slander cases are extremely hard to prove, since one must prove deliberate malice on the part of the accused. Also, truth is an absolute defense against a slander charge. If in the discovery process it was found that there was any truth to CBS's story, then not only would the case be lost, Bush would end up going down, hard.
Furthermore, even the attempt to prosecute a critic of the administration would set a terrible precedent, and it would probably cost Bush the election, because it is rightly seen as an abuse of power. Even a simple defamation suit would be seen in the same way. And the way defamation statutes are written pretty much exempt them from protecting public officials while they are in office.
(snip) Third, questions of slander, libel, and defamation are almost always civil not criminal actions. I am hard pressed to think of defamatory action that is criminal except for the food defamation laws, and these laws are doubtful constitutionality. (Though, under the recent spate of appointments of radical, activist justices, such as Scalia and Roberts for whom stare decisiis is but a speed bump, the law is shifting all the time.)