An Arizona grand jury indicted two local Republican officials who balked at certifying their county’s general election results by the legal deadline in 2022 – in a standoff with state officials that drew national attention at the time.
Cochise County Supervisors Peggy Judd, 61, and Tom Crosby, 64, each were charged with two felonies: interference with an election officer and conspiracy, according to the indictment.
“The repeated attempts to undermine our democracy are unacceptable,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday, announcing the indictment.
The absolute defense against libel/slander is believing what you write/say.
“We believed they were seditious”.
Done
Yup, was gonna say that. Pretty sure most mainstream media are overzealous with the “alleged” and “supposed” and so on not because they think they risk lawsuits.
In cases where what they’re saying is obviously true and/or they can credibly argue sincerity, as you mention, any such suit would be defeated by anti-SLAPP laws in most states and be dismissed as a waste of time by 90%+ of judges in the rest. The remaining cases would show the judge as well as the plaintiff to be clearly biased against the truth, which is better publicity than any media org could buy.
Rather, they’re being obsequious in an effort to preserve the illusion of having no bias and/or otherwise cowardly neglecting their journalistic duty of honesty and truthfulness in favor of expediency and peace of mind.
They could learn a lot from this Rolling Stone article: