In addition, a defamation defendant will file any number of aggressive pre-trial motions to try to dismiss the case against it, and failing that, to narrow the issues, which also can take years.Īfter the election, when time was not an issue, McCain could have filed a defamation action against the Times.
The process alone could have taken years. In addition, the underpaid and overworked federal judiciary docket is crowded, and as a defendant, The New York Times would have undertaken extensive discovery-digging for dirt to try to force McCain to back off. The Times has insurance covering such litigation costs, and a very able team of lawyers to defend its interests. Had McCain filed a fast lawsuit against The New York Times, he would never have been able to resolve it before the election.
Certainly, there was no remedy at all to be had before the election. Unfortunately, however, John McCain really had no attractive legal remedy.įor all practical purposes, a presidential candidate like John McCain has no attractive legal remedy of which to avail himself in order to establish the falsity of the claims against him. , it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.” The story tumbled through several cycles with the Times refusing to back off, notwithstanding a firestorm of responses from Republicans (and even a few Democrats) to the thinly-written report of the “illicit sex” and influence-peddling, and it attracted even more negative responses when The Times’ ombudsman editor wrote, “if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair.
The woman named by The Times, Vicki Iseman, also denied the story, but was nowhere to be found. Other Washington journalists figured that The Times had finally nailed a story that had been rumored to be true for years. McCain’s denial seemed weak in calling it a “hit and run smear campaign,” when tabloid journalism was not the style of America’s newspaper of record. The story of the attractive blonde lobbyist, three decades younger that the senator who wanted to be president, became instant world news. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself-instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him. A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet.
It opened as if it had been written for The National Enquirer: “Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers. Just as McCain was emerging in 2008 as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, The New York Times tossed a weapon-of-mass-destruction-type story at his campaign on February 8, 2008. Every time I see McCain-which is pretty often, for he is always busy trying to get the United States into a major war somewhere, anywhere-I fleetingly flash on the remarkable story that produced Ms. It has been on my “to do” list for a while to check to see what happened to the $27 million lawsuit that was filed by Vicki Iseman against The New York Times following the defeat of Senator John McCain’s presidential run in 2008.
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