Lionel Nation - BEWARE: Suing Candace and YouTube Creators Is Insanity
Aired: 2026-01-21
Duration: 23:18


=== Nothing Changes Everything (15:26) ===

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[00:01:02]  Let me ask you a question.
[00:01:03]  When was the last time you recall there ever being a famous defamation lawsuit?
[00:01:10]  Civil litigation.
[00:01:12]  An actual lawsuit, a trial with witnesses called and subpoenaed to testify as to defamatory or libelous statements made against someone.
[00:01:25]  I don't know.
[00:01:28]  It's always litigation, settlement.
[00:01:31]  Litigation, or I should say, filing the suit, scaring somebody, shutting somebody up, settlement.
[00:01:38]  And maybe that's a good thing.
[00:01:40]  Maybe that's a good thing.
[00:01:41]  Maybe in general, the argument is that, you know, settlement is reached for the most part in most civil cases, and that's good.
[00:01:53]  But there's a problem with that.
[00:01:55]  Prosecution?
[00:01:56]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:57]  Oh, of course.
[00:01:58]  We see that all the time.
[00:01:59]  But when was the last time somebody said, I've got to go to court and I've got to get my reputation back.
[00:02:04]  And how many times was a person's reputation received back?
[00:02:07]  Now, I'm a lawyer, okay?
[00:02:10]  I know what I'm talking about.
[00:02:12]  Former prosecutor, current licensed trial lawyer, know what I'm talking about.
[00:02:16]  And from my perspective, if you truly want someone to stop doing something, the legal tool you reach for first is injunctive relief.
[00:02:29]  An injunction really is not about money.
[00:02:31]  It's not about punishment.
[00:02:33]  It's about a court order that says, stop it.
[00:02:36]  Stop publishing.
[00:02:37]  Stop repeating.
[00:02:38]  Stop acting.
[00:02:39]  Stop saying.
[00:02:40]  It's the cleanest and fastest mechanism that deal with irreparable harm and deals with really what you're trying to do.
[00:02:46]  You want somebody to stop saying something.
[00:02:50]  You want it to happen now.
[00:02:52]  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.
[00:03:04]  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.
[00:03:16]  Instead of stopping the story, they supercharge it.
[00:03:21]  Instead of reducing attention, they multiply it.
[00:03:26]  Instead of restoring credibility, they create suspicion.
[00:03:30]  You've got to ask yourself, what am I trying to do here?
[00:03:33]  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.
[00:03:47]  You hurt me.
[00:03:48]  Not you embarrass me, not you said something that I wish you'd stop, but that you said something.
[00:03:53]  You know, in theory, you sue someone who lied about you.
[00:03:57]  You prove the statement was false, you show actual harm, and you receive compensation or a public correction.
[00:04:03]  See, that's the textbook version.
[00:04:04]  That's the way it used to be.
[00:04:07]  Think of this.
[00:04:08]  You have a restaurant.
[00:04:11]  I write in Yelp or some kind of review that I found a dead mouse in the pizza or the salad.
[00:04:19]  And I'm your competitor.
[00:04:20]  Or I did it just to hurt you.
[00:04:22]  And business has hurt this lie.
[00:04:25]  Remember, defamation is an absolute lie.
[00:04:27]  It is a lie.
[00:04:28]  It is a statement of fact that is wrong.
[00:04:31]  Not an opinion, but a statement of fact.
[00:04:33]  And it falls under different categories.
[00:04:35]  I don't want to go into the basics of that.
[00:04:36]  But the point is, it's a statement of fact that's wrong.
[00:04:38]  It's not an opinion.
[00:04:40]  You're saying this, and truth is a defense.
[00:04:43]  Truth is a defense.
[00:04:44]  If somebody says, no, I found a mouse, here it is, here are the pictures, here are the witnesses.
[00:04:51]  That's not defamation.
[00:04:53]  There's intentional infliction of emotional distress.
[00:04:56]  We'll talk about that later on.
[00:04:58]  But in the modern world today, in the modern world of social media, viral outrage and political tribalism, this model breaks down.
[00:05:06]  Litigation no longer operates in a vacuum.
[00:05:08]  It operates inside a media saying this word a lot, ecosystem that thrives on conflict.
[00:05:18]  I mean, here's the first problem.
[00:05:20]  When a lawsuit is filed, the public doesn't evaluate legal standards.
[00:05:25]  They don't think about falsity, negligence, malice, New York Times against Sullivan, preponderance of the evidence versus reasonable.
[00:05:34]  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.
[00:05:49]  And in today's culture, that often reads as suppression, not justice.
[00:05:54]  Remember this.
[00:05:55]  And this also creates what lawyers quietly recognize as the credibility inversion problem.
[00:06:02]  See, instead of weakening an accusation, the lawsuit gives it weight.
[00:06:06]  It's the Streisand effect.
[00:06:08]  We've talked about this.
[00:06:09]  People assume that if someone is willing to sue, the underlying claim must be serious.
[00:06:15]  Otherwise, why escalate?
[00:06:17]  Now, the act of filing becomes proof in the court of public opinion that something sensitive has been touched.
[00:06:25]  People don't think about, well, it's just an accusation.
[00:06:28]  You've got to answer the complaint.
[00:06:29]  No!
[00:06:31]  And I'm going to say this again, the Streisand effect.
[00:06:34]  Attempts to suppress speech frequently draw more attention to the speech in the first place.
[00:06:40]  Court filings become headlines.
[00:06:42]  Motions become social media contact.
[00:06:44]  You get TMZ.
[00:06:46]  You don't know how many times, how many times I've heard things on TV or on various viewpoints that is just wrong.
[00:06:56]  See, every procedural step becomes part of the story.
[00:07:00]  What was once fringe now has institutional visibility.
[00:07:04]  Then there's discovery.
[00:07:08]  This is where lawyers become especially cautious.
[00:07:12]  When you sue, you open yourself to reciprocal investigation.
[00:07:18]  Let me see all your emails.
[00:07:20]  Let me see all of your text messages and screenshots.
[00:07:22]  And what did you say?
[00:07:24]  And you as the defendant, the one being sued, says, good.
[00:07:27]  And you show me yours.
[00:07:29]  Emails, internal messages, memos, everything that's said online, internal messaging, financial documents, decision-making records, all can become subject to disclosure.
[00:07:42]  If the original controversy involved questions about finances, governance, internal operations, discovery becomes a spotlight.
[00:07:55]  And then you get gag orders, and then this is limited.
[00:07:57]  And then you've opened this up and you're wondering, what am I doing?
[00:08:01]  And instead of narrowing the issue, litigation broadens it.
[00:08:05]  Now, let me explain something.
[00:08:06]  Believe me, I'm not going to argue.
[00:08:10]  I understand the reason for tort litigation.
[00:08:14]  Tort versus crime.
[00:08:16]  Tort is a civil wrong.
[00:08:17]  Tort from the Latin tortius, meaning twisted, hurt, harmed, bothered.
[00:08:22]  I understand that.
[00:08:24]  Believe me, I'm not at all suggesting that you go away.
[00:08:28]  But you also have to realize that sometimes it's the best thing.
[00:08:31]  Let me ask you something.
[00:08:32]  Do you ever know somebody who's ever considered whether they should maybe settle or go into divorce court?
[00:08:40]  A couple separates, and you tell them, listen, whatever you do, try your best to do this amicably.
[00:08:46]  Oh, no, no, no.
[00:08:47]  I'm going to take that son of a gun to court.
[00:08:49]  And it just, oh my God.
[00:08:52]  See?
[00:08:55]  Court is, I'm sorry, it was originally civil court, was designed to prevent dueling, but sometimes the effect can be worse than anything.
[00:09:06]  Because remember, with criminal law, it's very simple.
[00:09:08]  I won jail.
[00:09:10]  Somebody was hurt.
[00:09:11]  Crimes are very easy.
[00:09:13]  Defamation, libel, libel per se, libel per quar.
[00:09:18]  See, this is why experienced trial lawyers often advise restraint.
[00:09:23]  Not every allegation deserves oxygen.
[00:09:26]  Some claims collapse on their own if ignored.
[00:09:29]  Filing a lawsuit elevates them.
[00:09:31]  It gives them structure.
[00:09:32]  It gives them legitimacy.
[00:09:35]  It turns online speculation into formal legal controversy.
[00:09:40]  Now, I don't want to keep bringing up, but this is going to affect, interestingly enough, the Brigitte Macron lawsuit.
[00:09:46]  That's another story, because let me just say something very quickly.
[00:09:49]  That is not just about allegations of gender.
[00:09:51]  That's about crime and other matters too.
[00:09:54]  That's a 19 or 20 count, I can't remember exactly, recall, complaint.
[00:09:59]  It's a different story.
[00:10:01]  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?
[00:10:12]  What were we thinking?
[00:10:14]  What did we do?
[00:10:15]  What is the purpose of this?
[00:10:16]  Are fewer people talking about us now?
[00:10:20]  No.
[00:10:24]  You know, I know this is a touchy thing.
[00:10:28]  And by the way, I know nothing about the allegations.
[00:10:31]  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.
[00:10:49]  I know nothing about that.
[00:10:51]  I can't tell you stories about gender.
[00:10:53]  But what I can tell you is this.
[00:10:56]  Madam, First Lady, really think about lawsuits, as you'll see.
[00:11:02]  It's not what you think it is.
[00:11:04]  It's different today.
[00:11:06]  It's different.
[00:11:08]  Because you've got, remember, this echo chamber that goes 24-7.
[00:11:13]  And by the way, the TPUSA situation illustrates this dynamic clearly.
[00:11:18]  If leadership believed online questions about financial irregularities were weak or unfounded, probably the lowest risk approach would have been transparency and distance.
[00:11:28]  I know this is weird.
[00:11:30]  Publish records, clarify procedures, move forward.
[00:11:33]  Instead, instead, legal escalation changes the narrative.
[00:11:38]  The best way is to make the person making the claim look ridiculous, unfounded.
[00:11:42]  Like, you gotta be a word story.
[00:11:44]  You're wrong.
[00:11:45]  You're wrong.
[00:11:46]  He doesn't know what he's talking about.
[00:11:48]  There's nothing worse than that.
[00:11:50]  Oh my God, there's nothing worse than that.
[00:11:53]  Had You know, uh, energy bills are rising at a historic rate, and there's no end in sight.
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[00:12:26]  Order now.
[00:12:28]  Erica ever been able to say, I don't know anything about Fort Huachuca.
[00:12:32]  I've never been there.
[00:12:32]  Nobody, you know, and had it been absolutely true or provable, it would have been a different story.
[00:12:38]  But it's not.
[00:12:39]  You see, now all of a sudden, Fort Huachuca is in the subject matter because it was denied.
[00:12:46]  If it was ignored, who can even pronounce it?
[00:12:49]  Now, by the way, in this matter, this has all stopped being about whether claims were accurate.
[00:12:56]  And today it becomes whether leadership was trying to silence criticism.
[00:13:01]  That's it.
[00:13:03]  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.
[00:13:12]  Now, from a legal standpoint, this is especially dangerous because public figures face, of course, a higher burden in defamation cases.
[00:13:20]  They must show actual malice.
[00:13:22]  That means proving the speaker knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
[00:13:29]  This isn't easy.
[00:13:31]  Filing without overwhelming evidence increases the chance of failure and public embarrassment.
[00:13:37]  And threatening alone isn't enough.
[00:13:40]  Let me ask you something.
[00:13:42]  Since Wolves and Finance or whatever, this young fella he's very, very, very popular site.
[00:13:50]  I know someone, I've seen some of his works, terrific, great, in the panoply of public opinion.
[00:13:55]  I guarantee you, his name recognition.
[00:14:01]  Why'd you do that?
[00:14:04]  Now people are going to say, well, let me see what he said then.
[00:14:06]  Oh, this is good.
[00:14:07]  Well, it must be something.
[00:14:08]  Great.
[00:14:08]  Congratulations.
[00:14:10]  Congratulations.
[00:14:12]  Now you took this detractor who could have been shelved and kind of said, you know, he's cuckoo for Coco pumps this guy.
[00:14:17]  But no, no, no, no.
[00:14:18]  Now he's the now he's the martyr.
[00:14:20]  And the Macron Law lawsuit, by the way, involving Brigitte and Emmanuel Mehron against Candace Owens demonstrates the same modern pattern.
[00:14:29]  Regardless of political perspective, many observers interpreted the case not as reputation defense, but as a power enforcement.
[00:14:38]  Like you're embarrassing, you piss us off, or something.
[00:14:42]  Because you're saying, this is the president and his wife of France.
[00:14:48]  Not some school teacher who's subject to local ignominy and shame and opprobrium.
[00:14:54]  No.
[00:14:54]  The lawsuit created international attention.
[00:14:58]  It expanded the reach of the original claims.
[00:15:00]  And a lot of people are saying, what's the lawsuit about?
[00:15:03]  Well, they're suggesting, inter alia, among other things, that Brigitte Macron is a man.

=== Strategic Lawfare Tactics (07:17) ===

[00:15:12]  Really?
[00:15:14]  You know?
[00:15:16]  I never noticed this before, but yeah.
[00:15:20]  Now, I'm not saying that, but you see somebody doing that?
[00:15:23]  It's like, I didn't know about that.
[00:15:25]  See, not everybody knows what you know.
[00:15:27]  It reinforces the idea that courts were being used as political crowbars and tools rather than neutral arbiters.
[00:15:34]  And this leads directly to the concept of lawfare.
[00:15:38]  Oh my God.
[00:15:39]  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.
[00:15:52]  And in simple terms, it's using the courtroom as a weapon.
[00:15:57]  Lawfare does not depend on winning.
[00:16:01]  It depends on pressure and headlines, financial burden, and fright and intimidation and scaring and narrative control.
[00:16:09]  And in the digital age, my friends, many people automatically interpret high-profile defamation suits through that lens.
[00:16:18]  And even when legitimate legal issues exist, the optics dominate.
[00:16:23]  See, the public assumes the gold is deterrence, not truth, and you don't want that.
[00:16:30]  Another problem, of course, is timing.
[00:16:32]  Courts move slowly.
[00:16:33]  The internet moves instantly.
[00:16:35]  By the time a case reaches resolution, the reputational impact has already happened.
[00:16:41]  The damage has been done.
[00:16:43]  And the favorable ruling years later doesn't erase millions of views, millions of opinions, and reposts or archived content.
[00:16:54]  Litigation is a slow, glacier-like tool in a fast environment.
[00:17:00]  And this is why modern crisis management increasingly favors and prefers transparency over litigation.
[00:17:10]  Documents beat depositions.
[00:17:12]  Public explanations outperform subpoenas.
[00:17:16]  In some cases, especially, remember, this is media.
[00:17:20]  When people see openness, trust can rebuild.
[00:17:24]  When they see threats, skepticism grows.
[00:17:27]  And this is also where anti-slap laws come into play.
[00:17:33]  SLAP, S-L-A-P-P, stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
[00:17:40]  And these are lawsuits filed primarily to silence critics rather than to resolve legitimate disputes.
[00:17:46]  Anti-SLAP legislation exists to protect free speech by allowing defendants to quickly dismiss lawsuits that target public commentary.
[00:17:57]  And these laws also shift legal fees to plaintiffs when cases are abusive.
[00:18:04]  See, that's another matter.
[00:18:06]  Who pays for this?
[00:18:07]  Well, if you're empty pockets, you can pay all the lawyers you want.
[00:18:10]  But if you're just some eighth-grade teacher from Dothan, Alabama, it's a different story.
[00:18:16]  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.
[00:18:26]  Anyway, prevent courts from becoming censorship tools.
[00:18:31]  We hate prior restraint.
[00:18:32]  We hate people being told ahead of time, you can't say something.
[00:18:35]  Now, from a lawyer's perspective, this reflects a recognition that lawmakers, that litigation has increasingly been misused.
[00:18:44]  I'm not saying here in this case, but before.
[00:18:47]  And the system itself has adapted to prevent abuse.
[00:18:51]  There is also a cultural shift that's driving all of this.
[00:18:55]  Public trust in authority has declined.
[00:18:59]  People are skeptical of centralized power.
[00:19:02]  They're tired of lawsuits.
[00:19:04]  When they see lawsuits aimed at speech, their instinct is not sympathy, it's suspicion.
[00:19:09]  They ask what is being hidden.
[00:19:12]  They ask why force is needed instead of facts.
[00:19:15]  Now, this doesn't mean that defamation law has no place.
[00:19:18]  Oh, no, no, no.
[00:19:19]  Real harm exists.
[00:19:21]  False accusations can destroy private individuals without a doubt.
[00:19:25]  People who don't have access to the fora that other people do.
[00:19:29]  People without platforms still need legal protection.
[00:19:32]  But when powerful organizations and public figures file lawsuits, the power imbalance becomes the story.
[00:19:39]  Now, strategically, the smartest move in many modern controversies is restraint.
[00:19:47]  Not silence forever.
[00:19:49]  Strategic restraint, clear communication, documentation, then disengagement.
[00:19:56]  Weak claims collapse when starved of attention, and attention is the oxygen.
[00:20:02]  Say putting out a fire.
[00:20:03]  You put a blanket over it to smother it.
[00:20:06]  Lawyers are trained to fight, but they're also trained to assess risk.
[00:20:10]  And today, defamation litigation carries enormous reputational danger.
[00:20:16]  It invites discovery.
[00:20:17]  It amplifies controversy.
[00:20:19]  It triggers lawfare narratives.
[00:20:22]  It's a different world now.
[00:20:23]  It energizes critics.
[00:20:25]  It prolongs media cycles.
[00:20:27]  And ironically, ironically, plaintiffs often end up proving what they wanted to avoid.
[00:20:34]  See, by suing, they convince the public that the issue matters.
[00:20:38]  They legitimize speculation.
[00:20:40]  They elevate fringe voices into national figures.
[00:20:44]  You determine what the fringe is, I'm not sure.
[00:20:46]  But courts were never designed to be public relations tools.
[00:20:49]  They exist to resolve narrow legal disputes, not to manage narratives and reputation.
[00:20:56]  Using them for reputation management is like using a hammer to fix a watch.
[00:21:02]  You might hit the target, but you will probably break everything around it.
[00:21:06]  Transparency, transparency, transparency.
[00:21:09]  It works better than intimidation.
[00:21:11]  Calm professionalism beats theatrical escalation.
[00:21:16]  Documentation outperforms legal threats.
[00:21:21]  The public environment has changed.
[00:21:24]  Information is permanent.
[00:21:26]  Screenshots live forever.
[00:21:29]  Search engines archive everything.
[00:21:31]  Once a lawsuit is filed, it becomes part of the permanent digital record.
[00:21:37]  Defamation law still exists.
[00:21:39]  It's important.
[00:21:40]  It still matters.
[00:21:41]  It is critical, absolutely.
[00:21:43]  But the strategy surrounding it must evolve.
[00:21:46]  Otherwise, lawsuits will continue doing exactly what they were never meant to do.
[00:21:52]  Making controversies larger.
[00:21:56]  Turning whispers into, in essence, megaphones.
[00:22:02]  And transforming legal protection into reputational damage.
[00:22:07]  This is what you need to hear.
[00:22:09]  If you really want to understand what's happening, listen to what I'm saying.
[00:22:12]  What do you think, my friend?
[00:22:13]  I want to see your comments have been fantastic.

=== What Do You Have to Hide? (01:03) ===

[00:22:18]  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.
[00:22:26]  What do you think?
[00:22:27]  You say, hey, this is good.
[00:22:29]  Stop that man.
[00:22:30]  Or do you say, what do you have to hide?
[00:22:32]  What do you have to hide?
[00:22:33]  Why is this gazillion dollar corporation going after this poor little old YouTuber?
[00:22:40]  Or maybe the opposite?
[00:22:41]  Tell me.
[00:22:42]  You let me know.
[00:22:44]  My friends, I thank you for watching.
[00:22:46]  Please like this video.
[00:22:47]  Hit that little bell to be notified of live videos and new videos.
[00:22:52]  And also make sure you subscribe.
[00:22:54]  Subscribe, subscribe.
[00:22:55]  We need your involvement.
[00:22:57]  Join us.
[00:22:58]  I'm the voice of clarity, limpidity, pellucidity.
[00:23:02]  I'll give you the truth every single time.
[00:23:04]  Most of the time you'll like it, but I'll never lie to you.
[00:23:07]  Sometimes you might prefer a lie, but I'm not going to give it to you.
[00:23:11]  All right, my friends.
[00:23:12]  Have a great and a glorious day.
[00:23:13]  Ooh, there's a phone call.
[00:23:14]  Until then, my friends, remember, comment as you see fit.