Michael Flynn loses defamation appeal against Trump critic Rick Wilson

Rick Wilson, the former GOP political operative turned critic of Donald Trump and MAGA, has defeated a defamation suit filed by Michael Flynn, briefly Trump’s national security adviser, involving social media posts tying Flynn to Russia and the Qanon conspiracy theory.

Following a January trial, a Sarasota County trial judge ruled that Flynn, also a retired lieutenant general, failed to prove that Lincoln Project co-founder and Tallahassee resident Wilson had defamed him. 

On Wednesday, the Florida Second District Court of Appeal affirmed the decision.

Wilson argued that his messages were protected by the First Amendment as opinion or rhetorical hyperbole; the trial and appeals courts agreed.

“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,’” Judge Susan Rothstein-Youakim wrote for a panel also including judges Darryl Casanueva and Laurence Silberman. 

“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,” the opinion continues. “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 so we affirm.”

Flynn sought $50 million in damages and an order for Wilson to stop “defaming” him. Instead, he has been ordered by the court to pay Wilson’s appellate fees — which, Wilson wrote, amount to “Many zeroes. Six figures.”

“Their decision wasn’t just a win for me — it was a powerful affirmation of free speech,” Wilson said in his newsletter. “Not the warped, Elon-flavored ‘The Nazis had some good points’ free speech MAGA Twitter loves to celebrate, but actual free speech: my right to call out Mike Flynn’s character, conduct, and record.”

Ukraine invasion

Wilson’s tweets came in response to Flynn’s reaction following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

“My ‘offense?’ I tweeted ‘Putin Employee Mike Flynn’ after he tried some shameless Vladwashing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And their second ‘pillar’ — and I use that word as loosely as possible — was that I retweeted Jim Stewardson, who (in part) referred to Flynn as ‘Q’ of QAnon fame,” Wilson wrote Thursday in his Substack newsletter. “I kept imagining the legal implications if a retweet could be found to be defamatory. The world would be in some deep legal waters.”

Flynn has had a number of connections to Russia. He served 22 days as national security adviser but Trump fired him after concluding Flynn had lied to the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence about discussing U.S. sanctions placed by Barack Obama on Russia with the Russian government before taking office. Additionally, Flynn accepted a speaking engagement with RT, Russia Today, in Moscow in 2015, receiving $45,000, NBC reported.

Plain meaning

Flynn’s arguments focused on the plain meanings of the words Wilson used but the appellate judges replied that the context was crucial.

“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 reads. “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.”

The court said Flynn provided no evidence that Wilson acted with legal malice, nor could the Qanon statement be proven true or false.

“We agree with the trial court that no reasonable jury could find that Wilson defamed Flynn through the retweet of ‘FYI, Mike Flynn is Q,'” the judges wrote. 

‘Lawfare’

Wilson wrote that the case exemplified the use of “lawfare” by the MAGA movement to intimidate critics.

“Flynn’s crusade against me is just one stitch in the broader MAGA tapestry of lawfare. Whether it’s their suits against the Federal Government, NBC, CNN, Nicolle Wallace, Andrew Weissmann, Fred Wellman, MeidasTouch, Jim Stewardson, or anyone else who dares to speak the truth, the strategy is clear: silence the critics of Trump World by any means necessary, ” he wrote.

“Thankfully, the lower court — and now the DCA — disagreed. Free speech isn’t a one-way street, no matter how hard Flynn and his ilk try to rewrite the rules.”