Legal short for October 13, 2015: GOP mega-donor sues Mother Jones, loses, sort of

What just happened to Mother Jones magazine shouldn’t be allowed. Frank VanderSloot, who Salon’s Elias Isquith refers to as a “GOP mega-donor,” sued the magazine for defamation in 2012 following an article that referred to support for a Mitt Romney Super PAC by VanderSloot’s company. Isquith’s story is on an October 10, 2015, post on AlterNet.

Mother Jones spent $2.5 million in winning the case. That’s more of a penalty to the magazine than whatever the case cost billionaire VanderSloot, who can slough off the legal costs of his loss as chump change. Isquith points out that VanderSloot got litigious only after Mother Jones broke the “47 percent” story that hurt Romney’s chances for the White House.

VanderSloot’s suit was perfectly legal, but as Isquith writes, it could be construed as an attempt to “stifle speech by roping journalists into a war of attrition.” The real issue for Isquith is the impact of the Citizens United decision on political campaign financing. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy asserted in his decision that “independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption.” Isquith labels this “self-evidently absurd,” and he cites public opinion polls that support his conclusion.

Of course independent expenditures lead to, and create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption. To think a Supreme Court justice would argue otherwise is indeed absurd. What if the court had ruled against Citizens United and struck down or curtailed the types of PAC contributions and operations at issue in the case? My bet is that the Republicans in Congress would’ve attempted to have the campaign-contribution limitations removed. Whether they would have succeeded is an open question. Lucky for them, Justice Kennedy did their dirty work for them.