Topic: WorldNetDaily
Larry Klayman is a buffoon, a terrible lawyer and an ambulance-chasing hate peddler who likes to file nuiscance lawsuits to take revenge on his critics. He can't even tell the truth about himself, and when he's confronted with a situation in which he must -- i.e., when his ex-wife accused him of "inappropriate behavior" with his children -- he pleads the Fifth Amendment.
Here's an example of thte latter, from Klayman's Oct. 8 WorldNetDaily column, in which he complains about the indignities he suffered while filing nuisance lawsuits in the 1990s against Bill and Hillary Clinton, whom he calls "the Bonnie and Clyde of American politics":
In addition, every two weeks, an article would appear in the politically compromised the Washington Post – which, not coincidentally, is a client of Kendall’s Williams & Connelly. The articles contained false and misleading “information” to smear me. The name of the biweekly column, written by sleazy, pliant reporter David Segal, was called “The Klayman Chronicles,” a phrase adapted from a film, “The Clinton Chronicles,” about Slick Willy. While I was flattered to have my “own” biweekly column in the Washington Post, I was also outraged that this major newspaper, however leftist and compromised, would make it a mission to try to run interference for Bonnie and Clyde.
You will not be surprised to learn that this story happened completely differently from the way Klayman portrays it. David Segal did not write a "biweekly column" about Klayman for the Post; he wrote a column called "Washington Hearsay" in which he occasionally included a "Klayman Chronicles" section (it's unclear whether that section appeared on a biweekly schedle, as Klayman claims).
The purportedly "false and misleading information" Klayman claims Segal wrote about him is apparently a reference to a 1999 column in which Segal highlighted how aggressive Klayman's Judicial Watch minions were in badgering bookers to try and get Klayman on TV. According to a former employee, writes Segal, "Klayman demanded that his public relations person call a handful of talk show producers every single day, rain or shine, regardless of the day's news":
"He would come in each morning and ask, `Who have you called and why haven't you called?'" said the onetime employee, who requested anonymity. "If the show was doing Hollywood that night, he'd say call anyway. If they were doing Tiananmen Square he'd say, `Well, I'm an international lawyer, try to pitch that.' If there was a school shooting he'd say, `So what? We're doing important things here.'"
Unsurprisingly, Klayman sued Segal over this, claiming that he had been defamed because Segal "falsely caused [him] to appear so bent on publicity for himself that he is insensitive to the murder of innocent children." The case went to trial and Klayman lost, with the trial judge noting that "Mr. Klayman does not dispute that he considers his activities to warrant significant media attention."
Klayman appealed and he lost there too. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals stated that "the challenged material, in context, demonstrates that the article's message centered on Mr. Klayman's drive for publicity" and that the statements "could perhaps be viewed as unpleasant and offensive from Mr. Klayman's perspective, but such perceived unpleasantness and offensiveness are not sufficient to sustain an allegation that material is reasonably capable of defamatory meaning." The appeals court concluded: "Rather, when read in context, a reasonable person of ordinary intelligence would understand the words to convey the message that a school shooting tragedy should not interfere with an employee's scheduling of television talk show appearances to enable Judicial Watch to explain its public interest endeavors, even if scheduling appearances required pitching the public relations strategy to a major event of the day, such as the Tiananmen Square event."
In short, Klayman is still holding a grudge over something written about him nearly two decades ago, reminding us that he can't handle criticism. (Sound familiar?)
Klayman spends the remainder of his column denouncing the release of the Donld Trump tape in which he discusses his vile misogyny (though he concedes Trump made "disgusting, lewd comments"), ranting that "I would bet the ranch that David Kendall, Williams & Connelly and their private investigators – either the old ones or a whole new crop of sleaze balls – were behind this." No evidence has ever surfaced that they are.
