A federal judge in the District of Columbia has ruled that an MSNBC pundit's tweet accusing a lawyer of coaching a Jan. 6 hearing witness to lie was not negligent. The decision in Passantino v. Weissmann came down today from Judge Loren AliKhan, according to a report from Reason magazine.
The case centered on a tweet in which the pundit, Weissmann, suggested that the lawyer, Passantino, had been coaching a witness to lie before a Jan. 6 committee hearing. Judge AliKhan found that the statement failed to satisfy the negligence threshold required for a defamation claim, Reason reported.
The ruling underscores how courts treat accusations about a person's intent or credibility in heated political contexts. Because the source is a single news report, no further details about the earlier ruling or the broader factual record were provided in the account.