Dan Bishop files defamation lawsuit against Jeff Jackson’s campaign in NC AG race
U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop is suing his opponent’s campaign for defamation.
Earlier this month, Bishop and his campaign for North Carolina attorney general filed a defamation suit against U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson’s campaign, the state Democratic Party, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, and a company that conducts polls and surveys, for claims about his legal career that he said are false.
The suit, filed Oct. 3 in Union County Superior Court and first reported by Courthouse News Service, states that Bishop has been defamed by claims that he represented clients who stole from the elderly. The suit states that in July, the firm Dynata called a Union County voter to conduct a political survey, and asked them if they would be more or less likely to vote for Bishop if they “knew that, as a lawyer, he represented people who stole money from the elderly?”
Bishop states in the lawsuit that the question presented the claim as a “factual assertion,” and said that the question could have been asked of hundreds of other voters as part of the survey. The Republican congressman states that in his nearly 30 years of private practice, he never “represented people who stole from the elderly.”
The lawsuit states the claim “vaguely echoes” reporting by The New Republic earlier this year, which wrote in June that as an attorney, Bishop “worked multiple times with organizations accused of questionable business practices.” In the suit, Bishop claims that the story was “riddled with falsehoods,” and was republished last month with “substantial changes,” after his lawyers contacted The New Republic about “defamatory content” in the article.
A note at the bottom of the story states that it “originally misstated the status” of one of the cases it mentioned, and “has also been updated for clarity.”
Bishop claims in the suit that Dynata would have only conducted the survey after being engaged by a “direct or indirect client” that was one of, or a combination of, the named defendants. He also claims the information that formed the basis for The New Republic’s story was likely “opposition research” prepared by the defendants.
The lawsuit claims that the “defective, incomplete, unrepresentative and false opposition research” was provided for the political poll and the story “with knowledge of the falsity,” or “in conscious disregard of the truth as evidenced by cherry picking and distorting and mischaracterizing individual cases, and subordinating accuracy and truth to the object of competitive advantage in the campaign.”
Jackson and Bishop campaigns on defamation lawsuit
In a statement, Jackson’s campaign told The News & Observer that it looked forward to the lawsuit’s “swift resolution,” and indicated that it doesn’t expect it to be successful.
“Mr. Bishop says he wants to be Mark Robinson’s sidekick and we imagine this will have as much success as Mark Robinson’s legal actions,” the campaign said.
The campaign didn’t respond when asked later on Thursday if it had anything to do with the poll that is mentioned in the suit.
Tommy Mattocks, a spokesperson for the N.C. Democratic Party, said the allegation that the party was involved with the poll “is ridiculous and desperate.”
Bishop’s campaign, meanwhile, told The N&O it filed the suit “to protect Congressman Bishop’s professional reputation against false and defamatory accusations the Jackson campaign or its allies were preparing to launch.”
“The campaign hasn’t sought publicity about the suit, and the suit does not target Jeff Jackson personally. Frankly, we wish we didn’t even have to do this. The better course would be for candidates and their allies to maintain a basic level of decency,” the campaign said.
“But campaign tactics from the past two Democratic candidates for attorney general prompted widely-publicized litigation and investigations over defamation. This is becoming a pattern. The Bishop campaign will not sit back and yet again allow last-minute fabrications to be published or republished in the final weeks of a campaign.”
Bishop’s lawsuit follows another controversy during the bitterly fought 2020 attorney general’s race, when Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein and Republican Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill criticized each other over the backlog of untested rape kits.
O’Neill filed a complaint with election officials over an ad by the Stein campaign, which later led to Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman opening an investigation of her own. That investigation was ultimately closed after a federal appeals court said a 1931 state law Stein’s campaign had supposedly violated was likely unconstitutional.
Gov. Roy Cooper, who served four terms as attorney general before Stein was first elected in 2016, also faced a libel lawsuit from his opponent during his first bid for the office in 2000.
That suit, over a campaign ad that claimed Republican candidate Dan Boyce had charged $28,000 an hour to represent taxpayers who were suing the state, was eventually settled in 2014 with an apology from Cooper.
This story was originally published October 10, 2024 at 1:08 PM with the headline "Dan Bishop files defamation lawsuit against Jeff Jackson’s campaign in NC AG race."
