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Jan. 21, 2026 - Lionel Nation
23:18
BEWARE: Suing Candace and YouTube Creators Is Insanity
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Nothing Changes Everything 00:15:26
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Let me ask you a question.
When was the last time you recall there ever being a famous defamation lawsuit?
Civil litigation.
An actual lawsuit, a trial with witnesses called and subpoenaed to testify as to defamatory or libelous statements made against someone.
I don't know.
It's always litigation, settlement.
Litigation, or I should say, filing the suit, scaring somebody, shutting somebody up, settlement.
And maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe in general, the argument is that, you know, settlement is reached for the most part in most civil cases, and that's good.
But there's a problem with that.
Prosecution?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, of course.
We see that all the time.
But when was the last time somebody said, I've got to go to court and I've got to get my reputation back.
And how many times was a person's reputation received back?
Now, I'm a lawyer, okay?
I know what I'm talking about.
Former prosecutor, current licensed trial lawyer, know what I'm talking about.
And from my perspective, if you truly want someone to stop doing something, the legal tool you reach for first is injunctive relief.
An injunction really is not about money.
It's not about punishment.
It's about a court order that says, stop it.
Stop publishing.
Stop repeating.
Stop acting.
Stop saying.
It's the cleanest and fastest mechanism that deal with irreparable harm and deals with really what you're trying to do.
You want somebody to stop saying something.
You want it to happen now.
There's all kinds of variations of this, but it's the best, in many respects, mechanism the legal system has for halting alleged harm.
But when public figures skip this narrow approach and instead launch full defamation lawsuits or threaten them, what they often do is they trigger the exact opposite effect.
Instead of stopping the story, they supercharge it.
Instead of reducing attention, they multiply it.
Instead of restoring credibility, they create suspicion.
You've got to ask yourself, what am I trying to do here?
Defamation lawsuits, we're not going to get into defamation, libel versus slander, but defamation lawsuits are supposed to do one thing, to restore a damaged reputation, to correct for damages.
You hurt me.
Not you embarrass me, not you said something that I wish you'd stop, but that you said something.
You know, in theory, you sue someone who lied about you.
You prove the statement was false, you show actual harm, and you receive compensation or a public correction.
See, that's the textbook version.
That's the way it used to be.
Think of this.
You have a restaurant.
I write in Yelp or some kind of review that I found a dead mouse in the pizza or the salad.
And I'm your competitor.
Or I did it just to hurt you.
And business has hurt this lie.
Remember, defamation is an absolute lie.
It is a lie.
It is a statement of fact that is wrong.
Not an opinion, but a statement of fact.
And it falls under different categories.
I don't want to go into the basics of that.
But the point is, it's a statement of fact that's wrong.
It's not an opinion.
You're saying this, and truth is a defense.
Truth is a defense.
If somebody says, no, I found a mouse, here it is, here are the pictures, here are the witnesses.
That's not defamation.
There's intentional infliction of emotional distress.
We'll talk about that later on.
But in the modern world today, in the modern world of social media, viral outrage and political tribalism, this model breaks down.
Litigation no longer operates in a vacuum.
It operates inside a media saying this word a lot, ecosystem that thrives on conflict.
I mean, here's the first problem.
When a lawsuit is filed, the public doesn't evaluate legal standards.
They don't think about falsity, negligence, malice, New York Times against Sullivan, preponderance of the evidence versus reasonable.
No, they see power and they see lawyers and they see a wealthy or an influential party using the courts or some person being railroaded or bulldozed or flattened by the lawsuit.
And in today's culture, that often reads as suppression, not justice.
Remember this.
And this also creates what lawyers quietly recognize as the credibility inversion problem.
See, instead of weakening an accusation, the lawsuit gives it weight.
It's the Streisand effect.
We've talked about this.
People assume that if someone is willing to sue, the underlying claim must be serious.
Otherwise, why escalate?
Now, the act of filing becomes proof in the court of public opinion that something sensitive has been touched.
People don't think about, well, it's just an accusation.
You've got to answer the complaint.
No!
And I'm going to say this again, the Streisand effect.
Attempts to suppress speech frequently draw more attention to the speech in the first place.
Court filings become headlines.
Motions become social media contact.
You get TMZ.
You don't know how many times, how many times I've heard things on TV or on various viewpoints that is just wrong.
See, every procedural step becomes part of the story.
What was once fringe now has institutional visibility.
Then there's discovery.
This is where lawyers become especially cautious.
When you sue, you open yourself to reciprocal investigation.
Let me see all your emails.
Let me see all of your text messages and screenshots.
And what did you say?
And you as the defendant, the one being sued, says, good.
And you show me yours.
Emails, internal messages, memos, everything that's said online, internal messaging, financial documents, decision-making records, all can become subject to disclosure.
If the original controversy involved questions about finances, governance, internal operations, discovery becomes a spotlight.
And then you get gag orders, and then this is limited.
And then you've opened this up and you're wondering, what am I doing?
And instead of narrowing the issue, litigation broadens it.
Now, let me explain something.
Believe me, I'm not going to argue.
I understand the reason for tort litigation.
Tort versus crime.
Tort is a civil wrong.
Tort from the Latin tortius, meaning twisted, hurt, harmed, bothered.
I understand that.
Believe me, I'm not at all suggesting that you go away.
But you also have to realize that sometimes it's the best thing.
Let me ask you something.
Do you ever know somebody who's ever considered whether they should maybe settle or go into divorce court?
A couple separates, and you tell them, listen, whatever you do, try your best to do this amicably.
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm going to take that son of a gun to court.
And it just, oh my God.
See?
Court is, I'm sorry, it was originally civil court, was designed to prevent dueling, but sometimes the effect can be worse than anything.
Because remember, with criminal law, it's very simple.
I won jail.
Somebody was hurt.
Crimes are very easy.
Defamation, libel, libel per se, libel per quar.
See, this is why experienced trial lawyers often advise restraint.
Not every allegation deserves oxygen.
Some claims collapse on their own if ignored.
Filing a lawsuit elevates them.
It gives them structure.
It gives them legitimacy.
It turns online speculation into formal legal controversy.
Now, I don't want to keep bringing up, but this is going to affect, interestingly enough, the Brigitte Macron lawsuit.
That's another story, because let me just say something very quickly.
That is not just about allegations of gender.
That's about crime and other matters too.
That's a 19 or 20 count, I can't remember exactly, recall, complaint.
It's a different story.
But I promise you, I promise you, when this thing gets going, that Macron's are going to say, what the hell were we thinking with this?
What were we thinking?
What did we do?
What is the purpose of this?
Are fewer people talking about us now?
No.
You know, I know this is a touchy thing.
And by the way, I know nothing about the allegations.
And I say that because certain things that I know nothing about, but I've heard people suggest, you know, if this thing with Brigitte Macron becomes successful, you know, Michelle Obama has a lot of people she'd like to mention because what they say about her is brutal and cruel, and I believe so as well.
I know nothing about that.
I can't tell you stories about gender.
But what I can tell you is this.
Madam, First Lady, really think about lawsuits, as you'll see.
It's not what you think it is.
It's different today.
It's different.
Because you've got, remember, this echo chamber that goes 24-7.
And by the way, the TPUSA situation illustrates this dynamic clearly.
If leadership believed online questions about financial irregularities were weak or unfounded, probably the lowest risk approach would have been transparency and distance.
I know this is weird.
Publish records, clarify procedures, move forward.
Instead, instead, legal escalation changes the narrative.
The best way is to make the person making the claim look ridiculous, unfounded.
Like, you gotta be a word story.
You're wrong.
You're wrong.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
There's nothing worse than that.
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Order now.
Erica ever been able to say, I don't know anything about Fort Huachuca.
I've never been there.
Nobody, you know, and had it been absolutely true or provable, it would have been a different story.
But it's not.
You see, now all of a sudden, Fort Huachuca is in the subject matter because it was denied.
If it was ignored, who can even pronounce it?
Now, by the way, in this matter, this has all stopped being about whether claims were accurate.
And today it becomes whether leadership was trying to silence criticism.
That's it.
So you've got a whole bunch of people, a whole bunch of fellow influencers who take it very seriously when one of their own is shut down.
Now, from a legal standpoint, this is especially dangerous because public figures face, of course, a higher burden in defamation cases.
They must show actual malice.
That means proving the speaker knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
This isn't easy.
Filing without overwhelming evidence increases the chance of failure and public embarrassment.
And threatening alone isn't enough.
Let me ask you something.
Since Wolves and Finance or whatever, this young fella he's very, very, very popular site.
I know someone, I've seen some of his works, terrific, great, in the panoply of public opinion.
I guarantee you, his name recognition.
Why'd you do that?
Now people are going to say, well, let me see what he said then.
Oh, this is good.
Well, it must be something.
Great.
Congratulations.
Congratulations.
Now you took this detractor who could have been shelved and kind of said, you know, he's cuckoo for Coco pumps this guy.
But no, no, no, no.
Now he's the now he's the martyr.
And the Macron Law lawsuit, by the way, involving Brigitte and Emmanuel Mehron against Candace Owens demonstrates the same modern pattern.
Regardless of political perspective, many observers interpreted the case not as reputation defense, but as a power enforcement.
Like you're embarrassing, you piss us off, or something.
Because you're saying, this is the president and his wife of France.
Not some school teacher who's subject to local ignominy and shame and opprobrium.
No.
The lawsuit created international attention.
It expanded the reach of the original claims.
And a lot of people are saying, what's the lawsuit about?
Well, they're suggesting, inter alia, among other things, that Brigitte Macron is a man.
Strategic Lawfare Tactics 00:07:17
Really?
You know?
I never noticed this before, but yeah.
Now, I'm not saying that, but you see somebody doing that?
It's like, I didn't know about that.
See, not everybody knows what you know.
It reinforces the idea that courts were being used as political crowbars and tools rather than neutral arbiters.
And this leads directly to the concept of lawfare.
Oh my God.
Lawfare, my friends, as you know, is the strategic use of legal systems and lawsuits to achieve political, ideological, or reputational goals instead of resolving genuine legal harm.
And in simple terms, it's using the courtroom as a weapon.
Lawfare does not depend on winning.
It depends on pressure and headlines, financial burden, and fright and intimidation and scaring and narrative control.
And in the digital age, my friends, many people automatically interpret high-profile defamation suits through that lens.
And even when legitimate legal issues exist, the optics dominate.
See, the public assumes the gold is deterrence, not truth, and you don't want that.
Another problem, of course, is timing.
Courts move slowly.
The internet moves instantly.
By the time a case reaches resolution, the reputational impact has already happened.
The damage has been done.
And the favorable ruling years later doesn't erase millions of views, millions of opinions, and reposts or archived content.
Litigation is a slow, glacier-like tool in a fast environment.
And this is why modern crisis management increasingly favors and prefers transparency over litigation.
Documents beat depositions.
Public explanations outperform subpoenas.
In some cases, especially, remember, this is media.
When people see openness, trust can rebuild.
When they see threats, skepticism grows.
And this is also where anti-slap laws come into play.
SLAP, S-L-A-P-P, stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
And these are lawsuits filed primarily to silence critics rather than to resolve legitimate disputes.
Anti-SLAP legislation exists to protect free speech by allowing defendants to quickly dismiss lawsuits that target public commentary.
And these laws also shift legal fees to plaintiffs when cases are abusive.
See, that's another matter.
Who pays for this?
Well, if you're empty pockets, you can pay all the lawyers you want.
But if you're just some eighth-grade teacher from Dothan, Alabama, it's a different story.
Now, some people, by the way, mistakenly refer to this as SNAP legislation, but the correct term is SLAPP slap, S-L-A-P-P, slap, slap versus slap.
Anyway, prevent courts from becoming censorship tools.
We hate prior restraint.
We hate people being told ahead of time, you can't say something.
Now, from a lawyer's perspective, this reflects a recognition that lawmakers, that litigation has increasingly been misused.
I'm not saying here in this case, but before.
And the system itself has adapted to prevent abuse.
There is also a cultural shift that's driving all of this.
Public trust in authority has declined.
People are skeptical of centralized power.
They're tired of lawsuits.
When they see lawsuits aimed at speech, their instinct is not sympathy, it's suspicion.
They ask what is being hidden.
They ask why force is needed instead of facts.
Now, this doesn't mean that defamation law has no place.
Oh, no, no, no.
Real harm exists.
False accusations can destroy private individuals without a doubt.
People who don't have access to the fora that other people do.
People without platforms still need legal protection.
But when powerful organizations and public figures file lawsuits, the power imbalance becomes the story.
Now, strategically, the smartest move in many modern controversies is restraint.
Not silence forever.
Strategic restraint, clear communication, documentation, then disengagement.
Weak claims collapse when starved of attention, and attention is the oxygen.
Say putting out a fire.
You put a blanket over it to smother it.
Lawyers are trained to fight, but they're also trained to assess risk.
And today, defamation litigation carries enormous reputational danger.
It invites discovery.
It amplifies controversy.
It triggers lawfare narratives.
It's a different world now.
It energizes critics.
It prolongs media cycles.
And ironically, ironically, plaintiffs often end up proving what they wanted to avoid.
See, by suing, they convince the public that the issue matters.
They legitimize speculation.
They elevate fringe voices into national figures.
You determine what the fringe is, I'm not sure.
But courts were never designed to be public relations tools.
They exist to resolve narrow legal disputes, not to manage narratives and reputation.
Using them for reputation management is like using a hammer to fix a watch.
You might hit the target, but you will probably break everything around it.
Transparency, transparency, transparency.
It works better than intimidation.
Calm professionalism beats theatrical escalation.
Documentation outperforms legal threats.
The public environment has changed.
Information is permanent.
Screenshots live forever.
Search engines archive everything.
Once a lawsuit is filed, it becomes part of the permanent digital record.
Defamation law still exists.
It's important.
It still matters.
It is critical, absolutely.
But the strategy surrounding it must evolve.
Otherwise, lawsuits will continue doing exactly what they were never meant to do.
Making controversies larger.
Turning whispers into, in essence, megaphones.
And transforming legal protection into reputational damage.
This is what you need to hear.
If you really want to understand what's happening, listen to what I'm saying.
What do you think, my friend?
I want to see your comments have been fantastic.
What Do You Have to Hide? 00:01:03
Who ultimately, who looks right now when you see individuals being the subject of potential, by the way, there's been no lawsuits filed, but potential.
What do you think?
You say, hey, this is good.
Stop that man.
Or do you say, what do you have to hide?
What do you have to hide?
Why is this gazillion dollar corporation going after this poor little old YouTuber?
Or maybe the opposite?
Tell me.
You let me know.
My friends, I thank you for watching.
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I'll give you the truth every single time.
Most of the time you'll like it, but I'll never lie to you.
Sometimes you might prefer a lie, but I'm not going to give it to you.
All right, my friends.
Have a great and a glorious day.
Ooh, there's a phone call.
Until then, my friends, remember, comment as you see fit.
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