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Happy Monday! Dominion Voting Systems is suing Rudy Giuliani for $1.3 billion.

As Akiva notes, the legal question is going to boil down to something known as "actual malice."

That's a tricky concept for nonlawyers (and often for lawyers) so an explainer might help.


What I'm going to do with this thread is a bit different from normal - I'm going to start by explaining the underlying law so that you can see why lawyers are a little skeptical of the odds of success, and only look at the complaint after that.

So let's start with the most basic basics:
If you want to win a defamation case, you have to prove:
(1) that defendant made a false and defamatory statement about you;
(2) to a third party without privilege;
(3) with the required degree of fault;
(4) causing you to suffer damage.

For Dominion's defamation cases, proving 1 and 4 is easy. 2 is, in the case of the lawyers they're suing, slightly more complex but not hard. And 3 - degree of fault - is really really hard to prove.

A false statement of fact that is defamatory is a slam dunk element here - all the fraud allegations against dominion are totally banana-pants. They are also allegations which are clearly going to harm Dominion's reputation.
John Sullivan / “#ActivistJohn” / "#JaydenX" Update

Our first thread about John was intended to help protect leftist protest communities from his harmful behavior. Since John’s little stunt at the Capitol during the DC #Insurrection, we have more to talk about.

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This is a hella long thread... TL;DR: While it’s still unclear if John's end goal is chaos and confusion or if this is simply a side effect of shameless grifting — it’s clear that he continues to be a threat to protester safety whether he’s on the ground or online.

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Frantically cleaning up John’s messes continues to be a waste of time and energy in the nationwide movement for Black lives. So let’s continue to stay ahead of him, establish a national lockout, and wrap up this weird saga so we can get back to work, baby!

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Covered in this thread:

1. General updates (since our 11/26 thread)
2. John’s harmful tactics/behaviors
3. What happened last week (DC, 1/6)
4. Next steps

If you haven’t read our 11/26 thread about John, we recommend doing so for full


1⃣General Updates:

Shortly after our 11/26 thread, Seattle protesters made it clear that John is not welcome at our actions or in our online spaces. He later changed his main account names from “Activist X” and “Activist John” to “Activist Jayden” and “Jayden X.”

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