A career journalist covering spies and national security was hit with a $1 million defamation lawsuit. He turned t…
We spoke to SpyTalk's Jeff Stein in the days after his lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in federal court
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Substack promotes its Substack Defender service, which provides legal support to its publishers. The service is highlighted through the story of Jeff Stein, a journalist who used Defender to successfully defend against a $1 million defamation lawsuit. Stein's experience demonstrates the service's effectiveness in upholding a free press and free speech.
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A career journalist covering spies and national security was hit with a $1 million defamation lawsuit. He turned to Substack Defender for help—and won
We spoke to SpyTalk's Jeff Stein in the days after his lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in federal court
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Earlier this year, veteran national security reporter Jeff Steinwas served with an eye-watering $1 million defamation lawsuit after publishing a scoop about an incoming Trump administration official in his publication, SpyTalk. Backed by a number of authoritative sources, Jeff had reported that Keith Bass, the Pentagon’s incoming top health official, had been “effectively fired” from his previous role at the CIA for “poor management”. He turned to Substack Defender, which offers Substack publishers legal support as part of efforts to uphold a free press and free speech, to fight the case. With Defender’s support, the case was dismissed with prejudice last week in federal court.
SpyTalk has been on Substack since 2020, when Jeff brought his longtime column, previously at Newsweek and the Washington Post, to the platform and expanded it into a ring of seasoned reporters and experts breaking news and offering analysis on the world of clandestine operations. He also knows that world from the inside: before becoming a journalist, he served as a U.S. Army intelligence case officer in Vietnam. We spoke with him about threats to journalism, his experience with the lawsuit, and what it’s like to cover power and secrecy over a decades-long career.
You’ve written that legal threats like this are mostly nuisance suits but they still “suck up your time, your mind space, and your sleep.” What was it like to be served?
Well, at first it was a bit of a shock that I was being sued by this guy, and then as I read through the summons, I just scoffed, and I thought, this guy doesn’t have a case whatsoever. I was very confident about my facts, this piece had been thoroughly researched by myself, and my sources were authoritative. I couldn’t understand why he filed the suit, really.
[Without Defender] I would have had to go out searching on my own for somebody who might take on the case pro bono. The initial cost of just responding is really expensive. I’m not going to name how much [the lawyers] billed Substack, but it was in the tens of thousands of dollars just for these motions. We made a motion, they responded, we made another motion, then we had to go to court—and this is the baby steps of the legal dispute, right, just the initial steps, so you can imagine how much [a long-term case] costs. I look at my assets, which are pretty typical for a journalist, which is not a lot. My main asset being my house, I would have to sell it and, I don’t know, move into a one-room apartment? Something like that. These are the things that make you toss and turn at night.
Was this your first time getting help from the Defender program?
Three or four years ago I had a story that I thought might generate a defamation suit, so I wanted to run some paragraphs by the Defender lawyers, and they were great. They very quickly reviewed the copy and made a suggestion or two of rewording, which I did.
What happened this time around, when you applied for legal support for the Bass lawsuit?
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