But at issue in the lawsuit is not whether you like Fox News, or whether you think it did a good job of covering Trump’s claims that the election was stolen, or whether Fox employees thought their co-workers belonged in an asylum. At issue is whether any of the potentially defamatory statements about Dominion came from Fox News employees, rather than guests such as Trump, Giuliani and Powell, and whether Fox hosts’ comments were knowingly false statements of fact, rather than expressions of opinion.

Paul Clement would like for people to keep that in mind. …

“What makes this such an important First Amendment case is that the press has to have the ability to report newsworthy allegations and denials by public figures without having to worry about whether the allegations that are being made by the president, or the denials being made by a governor, are in fact true,” Clement told me. “If the president of the United States is alleging that there was fraud in an election, that’s newsworthy, whether or not there’s fraud in the election.”

[True enough — but coverage isn’t really the issue. The claim is that hosts propagated the false claims about Dominion despite having been warned they were false and defamatory, which would constitute actual malice. Dominion still has to *prove* that, and Jim’s right that it’s no slam dunk, but it’s not just about covering the “stop the steal” arguments and the “Kraken” lawsuits. — Ed]