Lawyer Alan Dershowitz loses appeal in CNN defamation case [View all]

Source: CNN Business/Reuters

PUBLISHED Aug 29, 2025, 8:07 PM ET


Retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz lost his bid on Friday to overturn a ruling that dismissed his defamation lawsuit against CNN over the news channel’s coverage of remarks he made during President Donald Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Dershowitz presented no evidence that CNN’s reporters and commentators operated with “actual malice” in covering Dershowitz’s defense of Trump’s push for Ukraine to investigate his rival in the 2020 race, Democrat Joe Biden.

Dershowitz “made a spontaneous series of remarks before Congress that, he says, were misinterpreted by pundits. But even if those commentators did report incorrectly on Dershowitz’s statements, he has offered no evidence that they did so intentionally,” Judge Britt Grant wrote in the majority opinion.

Dershowitz in an interview said he would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the 11th Circuit decision relied on a landmark 1964 ruling by the high court, New York Times v. Sullivan, that he said has “been expanded unrealistically to make lying journalists immune.”

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/29/business/alan-dershowitz-defamation-cnn