Lawsuit against McCrory allies by voters accused of fraud can move ahead, judges rule
A lawsuit alleging that Republican-affiliated groups falsely accused some North Carolinians of voter fraud is one step closer to going to trial before a jury.
The case centers on North Carolina’s 2016 gubernatorial election, when a Republican campaign tried a strategy much like the one former President Donald Trump has employed in claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
After preliminary results showed then-Gov. Pat McCrory lost the 2016 election, lawyers affiliated with McCrory and other supporters of his campaign accused numerous North Carolina voters, by name, of having committed fraud.
Those accusations were quickly proven false, and the voters sued for libel. McCrory himself wasn’t part of the lawsuit, but his supporters have fought it, claiming they’re immune from being sued for their false voter fraud accusations. All but one of the McCrory allies lost that argument at the N.C. Court of Appeals on Tuesday, potentially paving the way for a jury trial over whether political campaigns can commit libel with false voter fraud claims.
The ruling comes at the same time Trump and his allies continue to push states across the country to investigate instances of fraud in the 2020 election and attempt to undermine public trust in the results, much like McCrory allies did in 2016.
Unlike Trump, however, McCrory ultimately conceded the election.
”I think this case has always represented an important precursor to the ‘Big Lie’ that we saw take over the election in 2020 — and that we’re worried will continue — this kind of desperate measure by losing candidates to spread myths about voting fraud,” said Allison Riggs, a lawyer for the voters who sued, in an interview Tuesday.
The latest update to the case also comes as McCrory campaigns in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, with the Republican 2022 primary fast approaching.
McCrory, reached by phone Tuesday, declined to immediately comment on the appeals court ruling.
Claims of voter fraud
The McCrory supporters, who include members of prominent Washington law firm Holzman Vogel as well as Greensboro political activist William Porter, have never tried to claim in court that they were correct about their voter fraud allegations.
Instead, they have argued that they should be immune from defamation lawsuits regardless. The Court of Appeals agreed with that argument in the case of Porter, effectively dismissing him from the case Tuesday. The remaining defendants, however, are not immune from the defamation lawsuits, the court found. Riggs said one reason her clients are still pushing this lawsuit five years later is because that kind of argument needs to be shot down.
There is a defamation defense for people who act without bad intentions, Riggs said, but that was clearly not the case here.
“It’s definitely a great outcome, a unanimous panel with Democrats and Republicans on it said that (they) can’t hide behind the sort of legal defenses that exist for well-intended actors,” Riggs said.
The court ruling Tuesday was 3-0, from Democratic judges Toby Hampson and John Arrowood, and Republican judge Jeff Carpenter.
The earliest the case could go to trial would be early 2022, Riggs said, around the same time McCrory will be competing in the Republican Senate primary.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 2:01 PM.
