As regular readers will know by now, given that I lost my anti-SLAPP action against Ezra Levant due to the crippling stupidity, incompetence and embarrassing disinterest on the part of a number of Ontario judges, we will be going to actual trial one of these years, and here's one reason why Ezra should be more than a little concerned.
A fundamental part of Ezra's massively dishonest 2016 defamation suit against me involves his claim that, even when I knew better, I refused to (as he worded it) "correct the record" involving, among other things, the fact that he quietly arranged for some type of "personal financing" to beat the May 31, 2016 deadline for turning over donations to be matched. I suspect this is going to be a problem for Ezra when this topic comes up at trial, for the following reason that I believe neither he nor his wretched, bloviating gasbag of a lawyer are aware of.
After saying nothing for the entire month of May, 2016 about how he would be able to get access to all of the funds in his Indiegogo fundraiser in time to beat the deadline, it was only on June 1, 2016 (pretty much at the very end of his fundraiser) that Ezra made the astonishing admission that he had ... well, let's let Ezra's June 1, 2016 tweet speak for itself, shall we?
That would be me, only three days after Ezra announced his mysterious financing, doing exactly that -- publicly correcting someone else on Twitter by repeating exactly what Ezra had claimed three days earlier. In other words, as everyone can clearly see, I had in fact "corrected the record" on June 4.
Three days later, Ezra sued.
It will be entertaining to watch Ezra, on the stand and under oath, insist that I refused to correct the record, when I can produce uncontested evidence that I did exactly that and that he is clearly lying about it.
Yes, it's going to be an interesting trial.
AFTERSNARK: The other fundamental underpinning of Ezra's defamation action against me is his absolute insistence that I refused to "correct the record" regarding whether donors to his misleading and deceptive Indiegogo fundraiser would be getting charitable tax receipts.
Despite the fact that Ezra never, ever, at any time, provided proof that such tax receipts would be forthcoming (and, to this day, I have never seen any such evidence from any source), I persisted in asking the Red Cross about this, and they finally, on June 6, 2016, admitted that they were capable of issuing tax receipts in such cases, as long as they were provided with full donor amount and contact information. As soon as I learned that, I posted the following overly-generous correction of the record on June 6 and early June 7:
Getting Ezra on the stand and forcing him to admit that I had indeed "corrected the record" is going to be some kind of entertaining.
THIS IS IMPORTANT, SO PAY ATTENTION: There is a bigger picture issue here that I don't think a lot of folks understand, so I'm going to explain it and you need to pay attention to truly appreciate the sleaziness and dishonesty and rank opportunism of Ezra's piece-of-shit defamation lawsuit against me.
As I have explained in gruesome detail on previous occasions, it was on June 1 and June 5 of 2016 (and at no time earlier) that Ezra Levant, on Twitter, insisted that I was wrong in my claims about his fundraiser, and that I should "correct the record." There was no demand of deletion of Tweets, or any suggestion of legal action whatsoever; just a surprisingly civil insistence that I was wrong about things and that I should admit it and "correct the record."
As I'm sure you can read above, it was on June 4, 2016 that I repeated Ezra's (subsequently debunked) claim that he had succeeded in getting all donations to his fundraiser matched via some mysterious "financing"; as I have already explained on numerous occasions, Ezra fell spectacularly short in what he turned over, to the tune of over $60,000, but that is neither here not there. The point is that I had clearly "corrected the record" by repeating Ezra's claim about using some weird form of financing to effect the matching of donations.
As one can also read above, on June 6 and June 7, I further "corrected the record" regarding tax receipts, but only after I had had confirmation from the Red Cross itself, not from Ezra, but that's not the point I'm working toward here. What's critically important is that, in those two later tweets, I clearly and unambiguously stated that I had more information that I would be providing. And what was that upcoming information? We'll never know, because that's when Ezra frantically delivered his Statement of Claim on the afternoon of June 7 (later that same day), obviously to shut me up.
Pause with me and consider that astonishing timeline.
After insisting, on June 1 and June 5 of 2016, that I "correct the record," and even while I was, literally, doing exactly that (on June 4, 6, and 7) and announcing that there was more information coming, Ezra Levant -- clearly in the space of only hours -- lashed together a Statement of Claim, suing me for defamation and claiming that I had refused to "correct the record," even as I was obviously in the process of doing precisely that.
Let me represent that timeline in short sentences that even Ezra's gasbag of a lawyer would understand:
- "Correct the record."
- "Um, OK, it turns out that ..."
- "Fuck you, you refused to correct the record so I'm suing."
I can't wait for Ezra to defend that behaviour on the stand in an actual courtroom. It will be something to see.
2 comments:
I don't understand. If you had all this evidence that Ezra was lying, how did you lose that anti-SLAPP suit?
What part of "inept, incompetent, utterly unqualified judges" confuses you?
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