By Lauren Castle | Arizona Republic
Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has lost his battle against three national media outlets.
Lawyers representing Arpaio filed a lawsuit against CNN, the HuffPost and Rolling Stone in December, claiming the outlets had published false information about the former sheriff.
Thursday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. dismissed the defamation lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said in his opinion Thursday that Arpaio failed to prove malice.
“The burden of putting forward articulate facts of actual malice is a difficult one to meet, especially when discovery is not yet available to the parties,” he stated. “But without this safeguard, the threat of lawsuits would chill our precious First Amendment rights to freely engage in political discourse.”
