Category: News Feeds

 Newspaper headline posters display the main headlines for the Zimbabwean daily newspapers. (Photo: EPA-EFE/AARON UFUMELI)

In her latest frontline report, Maverick Citizen’s Thandekile Moyo continues a series of articles that look at life in Zimbabwe under the Covid-19 lockdown; what’s changed, what’s not, and what will never change – for as long as corrupt and complicit regime continues to use the power and resources of the state to keep itself in power.

On 14 April ZBC News online, the official Twitter page of Zimbabwe’s only TV station, posted a video of President Emmerson Mnangagwa saying that he was aware of a false statement on social media saying he would be extending lockdown until 3 May. He said he would ask the Central Intelligence Office (CIO) to investigate it and that if the person responsible was caught they should get “at least 20 years imprisonment” for “spreading falsehoods”.

“An example needs to be made,” the President said.

The CIO operates under the Office of the President. Many of Zimbabwe’s abductions, extrajudicial murders and enforced disappearances are said to be committed by the CIO. The head (minister) of State Security which oversees the CIO, Owen Mudha Ncube, was recently added to the US sanctions list for Human Rights violations. Emmerson Mnangagwa himself was the minister responsible for the CIO during the Gukurahundi genocide that left 20,000 civilians dead in Matebeleland.

Hearing the president take the trouble to publicly threaten whoever wrote the statement with CIOs was unsettling. We all feared the worst – not just for whoever the president was threatening but also for ourselves.

Passengers wait for their bus in Harare, Zimbabwe, 23 April 2020. (Photo: EPA-EFE/AARON UFUMELI)

However, on Sunday 21 April, what was meant to be the last day of the lockdown, the president announced that he was extending it until 3 May 2020, just as the allegedly fake statement had said. This gave rise to several questions and suspicions. Had the statement truly been fake or was the president a victim of a leak from his office? Many  wondered what the alleged falsehood mongerer would be charged with if found, now that the president had announced exactly what the statement had said he had decided.

“Was this fake news after all and, will the fake news charge stick?” people asked.

On 20 April the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) tweeted that they had arrested Lovemore Zvokusekwa for “Publishing or communicating false statements prejudicial to the state as defined in section 31 (a) (i) of the Criminal law (Codification and reform) act Chapter 9:23”.

As the president had stated in the video this crime attracts 20 years in jail and because the president had vowed to make an example of this case, there was an outcry from the public. Some questioned the word “circulating” in the charge.

Did Zvokusekwa produce the letter or had he just circulated it as hundreds of other Zimbabweans had when the letter fell into their inboxes and on their timelines?

Were they going to find and arrest everyone who had forwarded the letter?

Some argued that the law Zvokusekwa was being charged with had long since been ruled to be unconstitutional by the constitutional court in the case of Chimakure vs the Attorney General, rendering the arrest and charge an illegality and an abuse of Zvekusekwa’s rights. Some simply asked – was it fake news that the lockdown had been extended when the president had in fact extended it?

All these questions did not stop the state from dragging Zvekusekwa before a magistrate on 20 April and remanding him in custody until 13 May – a total of 23 days.

Something to be laughed at

The case of Zvokusekwa, whose surname in Shona ironically means “something to be laughed at”, illustrates a dangerous trend seen elsewhere. Covid-19 has provided an excuse to authoritarians to ramp up the stifling of dissent. The destination of choice has been attacks of freedom of expression and the media.

In Zimbabwe, starting with the case of the late Zororo Makamba, the first person to test positive in the country, the government has been accused of manipulating information on the true status of infections and its response to it. The digital or social media space has been the go-to alternative for a country hungry for information. It has also been a revolutionary space for government criticism, exposure of corruption and other excesses and demands for accountability. That, it seems, is the space the government has its eyes on.

But it faces a dilemma.

The government itself needs the digital media space for its own propaganda. The national broadcaster, ZBC, maintains a Twitter handle which it actively uses to churn out propaganda. On the page they post stories about everything the president does as well as stories highlighting the “generosity” and “benevolence” of the president and the first lady.

For years the Zimbabwean government has used twin devilish and draconian pieces of legislation to stifle political activity and dissent and public criticism: the Public Order and Security Act (Posa) and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).

The former, in requiring police permission for public gatherings, has been used to stop opposition from holding its rallies, while the latter has been used to intimidate and prevent journalists from doing their work. When he tried to show potential Western investors that he and his government were different from the late former president Robert Mugabe, Mnangagwa promised to repeal the two laws. Replacement drafts have been tabled but are no different. Meanwhile, Posa was used in August 2019 to stop opposition protests.

Code for repression

It is now clear that while all attention has been focused on Posa and AIPPA, the real devil is in the Criminal Code used to arrest Zvokusekwa which is equally draconian but carries far more severe penalties.

The obvious glee by the president in announcing to a nervous nation his eagerness to set his dreaded CIO on a citizen and then send that citizen to jail for spreading falsehoods demonstrates the importance of this piece of legislation in the repression toolbox of the regime. The government’s intention to use the Criminal Code to turn up its autocratic volume during the lockdown was exposed by the Permanent Secretary of Information hours before the publication of the regulations establishing the lockdown, when he threatened that people would soon see themselves in jail for spreading falsehoods.

The Covid-19 statutory instrument did not disappoint, importing verbatim the entire provisions of the code related to criminalising the publication of falsehoods. What seemed lost to the government, which does not seem to respect its own laws, let alone its own courts, is that this entire provision of the Criminal Code was struck down by the constitutional court in the Chimakure case six years ago. The Minister of Justice cited in the case at the time was none other than Emmerson Mnangagwa, now president. Nothing demonstrates the levels of lawlessness and lack of accountability more than this. This is clearly a government that does not consider itself bound by anything or accountable to anyone.

War on digital democracy

A man (L) walks past a blind man wearing a face mask begs for alms on a street pavement in Harare, Zimbabwe, 28 March 2020. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has announced a 21 day lockdown starting 30 March 2020 in an effort to curb the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic that has so far claimed one life in the country.(Photo: EPA-EFE/AARON UFUMELI)

It is clear that digital or social media will continue to be a new battleground for repression in Zimbabwe.

In the wake of Covid-19, the disastrous policy failures in the government’s response have been accompanied by allegations of shocking levels of procurement-related grand corruption and abuse of Covid-19 aid. Last week it was reported that a company run by (the president’s son) Collins Mnangagwa’s business partner, Delish Nguwaya, was awarded a $60-million contract to deliver pharmaceuticals related to Covid-19. The story was broken in digital media.

The Minister of Finance announced a programme to provide livelihood support via cash transfers to vulnerable households. The contract to disburse this money was awarded to a telecoms company closely linked to the political elite.

To make matters worse, the process to determine who is eligible for the government funding remains clouded in mystery. The only explanation the Minister of Finance gave was that they used a “complex algorithm” to select beneficiaries. With such opaque explanations and poor accountability, it is clear that even this money is likely to have been looted. In Covid-19 the government has found a new golden goose for its voraciously corrupt appetite.

In all this, the digital and social media space stands fast in ensuring that these scandals come to light, that the president is called to answer for his videos threatening citizens, the Minister of Health is asked to explain his policies and reports on Covid-19 and the Minister of Finance is asked to justify how government money is spent.

The power of digital and social media to counter state propaganda was also witnessed last week when the secretary of information posted this tweet:

“We received 65 Zimbabweans from the UK. Available place of quarantine is Belvedere Teachers College. They are refusing this accommodation demanding hotels. Govt can’t afford. Why come from a Covid-19 hotspot during a lockdown & demand posh facilities at stretched public cost?”

The returnees managed to expose the government lying by posting videos from the college where they were quarantined showing that the reason why they were asking to be moved to a better place was that there was no running water and more than 20 people were sharing just two toilets. The plan to deceive the public about why the returnees were rejecting the quarantine facility backfired terribly. The videos, by default, also served to expose the dire conditions under which students at the teachers’ college have been living in for years.

With a crumbling and discredited state media enterprise, the government needs the digital space. It will continue to need it for its propaganda, for PR exercises for the president and first lady and for Covid-19. But, with its tendency to capture and monopolise everything, it has yet to find a formula to control the digital media space beyond unconstitutionally switching off the internet. It has also yet to find a legal way to stop Zimbabweans from sharing information that exposes its failures besides provisions of the Criminal Code – struck down by the constitutional court but brazenly used to detain a civilian for almost one month.

In all this, it remains clear that if ever the falsehoods law was constitutional and anyone needed to be jailed, it would be the government and its litany of propagandists. It also highlights that in crying only for Posa and AIPPA to be repealed, citizens have ignored a greater danger – the devil is in the Criminal Code.

It is unacceptable that the president of Zimbabwe, who himself has never spent a single day in custody for any of his crimes – from genocide to looting minerals in the DRC and running down Zanu-PF companies as alleged by Mugabe’s administration before the coup – can arrest and threaten a man with 20 years in prison for circulating fake news that turned out to be true. DM/MC

Thandekile Moyo is a writer and human rights defender from Zimbabwe. For the past four years, she has been using print, digital and social media (Twitter: @mamoxn) to expose human rights abuses, bad governance and corruption. Moyo holds an Honours degree in Geography and Environmental Studies from the Midlands State University in Zimbabwe.

In an application filed on Sunday 26 April 2020 by Dr Tarisai Mutangi and Moses Nkomo of Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights, the informal traders and residents together with some residents associations,
protested that the widespread demolition of tuckshops, vending stalls and other property belonging to or
used by small and medium enterprises and informal traders by local and central government personnel
was unlawful and should be stopped immediately.

The informal traders, residents and residential associations represented by Chitungwiza Residents
Trust and Kushinga Epworth Residents Association, which have some members, who are individual
owners and users of tuckshops and vending stalls, want the High Court to interdict local authorities and
central government from demolishing any tuckshops and vending stalls.

Local and central government authorities have been demolishing informal traders’ market stalls and
tuckshops across the country after Moyo issued Circular Minute 3 of 2020 addressed to leaders of local
authorities advising them of a recent Cabinet resolution and instructing them to “take advantage of the
national lockdown to clean up and renovate small and medium enterprises and informal traders’
workspaces” and implored them “to make every effort to comply with the resolution”.

In purported compliance with Moyo’s circular, local authorities and their associations by way of random
verbal announcement, supposedly notified owners and users of tuckshops and vending stalls to pull down
their tuckshops and vending stalls or face demolition and immediately commenced destruction of
properties.

The informal traders and residents argued that Moyo’s circular is unlawful as it was not issued in terms
of any provision of the law and that there is no law which requires local authorities to execute Cabinet
resolutions outside the provisions of the applicable laws.

The unlawful instruction, the residents and informal traders charged, appears to have been taken
seriously by some local authorities which commenced demolitions in an apparent compliance with Moyo’s
circular.

Informal traders and residents argued that the demolition of tuckshops and vending stalls by local
authorities amounts to compulsory deprivation of property in violation of the fundamental right to property
enshrined in section 71 of the Constitution to the extent that the affected owners and users of tuckshops
and vending stalls pay fees and levies to local authorities and had not consented to the pulling down of
their properties.

Local authorities, the informal traders and residents said, have been indiscriminately demolishing
tuckshops and vending stalls without any consultation with the affected citizens including those who have
been paying fees and levies to councils. By demanding such fees and rates, local authorities do
acknowledge the legal existence of the affected vending stalls and tuckshops and cannot suddenly deem
them illegal structures, the informal traders charged.

The informal traders and residents said local councils have not complied with section 199(3) of the Urban
Councils Act, which requires proper notice of any proposed demolition of illegal structure to be given to
the owner of such a structure, a provision which provides for an appeal against the notice to be filed with
the Administrative Court within 28 days, during which period no action may be taken on the basis of the
notice until the appeal is either determined or abandoned.

Moyo’s circular, the residents and informal traders charged, is a blatant violation of the lockdown
measures announced by government through Statutory Instrument 83 of 2020 as it necessitates the
congregation of people among them vendors and local authorities’ personnel at the vending stalls and
tuckshop sites to carry out the instructions issued by local councils thus exposing citizens to infection by
the deadly coronavirus.

Furthermore, local authority employees deployed to carry out the illegal demolitions of vending stalls and
tuckshops, the residents and informal traders argued, were doing so in their regular workplace attires
contrary to the instruction in Moyo’s circular and World Health Organisation Guidelines that they ought to
put on personal protective equipment to prevent contracting and spreading coronavirus.

Residents and informal traders noted that the workers conducting the demolitions have not been declared
as essential service employees as required by the law and that the demolition of citizens’ only source of
legitimate livelihood, especially as government is struggling to provide social support to those in need of
it due to resource constraints exacerbated by inability of people to work during the national lockdown,
does not meet the definition of essential service and can wait.

The informal traders said the state, with all its might and resources, can always clear up and renovate
workspaces without violating the fundamental rights of its citizens and moreover, Moyo’s circular did not
mandate local authorities to demolish any structures, but simply requires them to clear and renovate and
hence it is possible for them to rearrange small to medium enterprises’ workspaces without demolitions

Post published in: Featured

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily Trivia Question of the Day feature.

Which justice was responsible for the installation of a frozen yogurt machine in the Supreme Court cafeteria?

Hint: This justice must agree with The Good Place on the matter of fro-yo: “I’ve come to really like frozen yogurt. There’s something so human about taking something and ruining it a little so you can have more of it.”

See the answer on the next page.

For all the deserved guff we give PACER and its archaic nickel and diming (mostly diming), the federal system has always been much easier to navigate thanks to its orderly filing system. State courts can get messy fast. This week, we chat with Nicole Clark, the Founder and CEO of Trellis, who is taking state court documents and turning them into the sort of structured data that can easily yield intel on the wild system of state courts.

COVID-19 has left its mark on every aspect of society. The New York state judiciary is just another thing that has been especially hard hit by the pandemic.

According to reports, New York State Court of Appeals Chief Judge Janet DiFiore announced the sobering statistics on the reach of the virus on the state judiciary.

“We know the virus has taken its toll on everyone, including our court family: 168 of our judges and court staff have tested positive for COVID-19,” the chief judge said.

“Tragically, several of our beloved judges and professional staff have passed away from complications caused by the virus. We send our thoughts and prayers to their family members and friends, as well as our promise to honor their memories and hold them close in our hearts,” Judge DiFiore said.

Of those 168 infected with the novel coronavirus, 17 are judges according to Judge DiFiore. Additionally, officials identified at least 94 of the infected as employees or officers and at least another 14 are attorneys. Others that have contracted the disease include visitors, a witness, a court reporter, and a juror.

Court officials confirmed that three court employees have died from the disease: Supreme Court Justices Noach Dear and Johnny Lee Baynes, as well as an unidentified court assistant.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

In the battle against disease, not all treatments are utilized equally. Depending on the malady, some drugs may be given as part of “first-line” treatment. In the cancer context, for example, first-line treatments are recognized as those that are the “first treatments given for a disease … accepted as the best treatment.” When those approaches fail to work, or “stop working,” second-line therapies come to the fore. What is true for cancer treatments is true for patent defense litigation. There are first-line defense tactics and second-line ones, subject of course to the ever-shifting sands of patent law as articulated by courts nationwide.

While the development of patent law through judicial decisions may at times seem slow and at other times fast, there is no doubt that when Congress gets involved major shifts happen seemingly overnight. Just as the discovery of a cancer-fighting molecule can give rise to a new first-line treatment, so too did the passage of the America Invents Act give rise to a new first-line defense for patent defendants. Otherwise known as the IPR, the proceeding that Justice Neil Gorsuch colorfully described recently as one that “permits a politically guided agency to revoke an inventor’s property right in an issued patent” resulting in the handing of “core judicial powers to agency officials and leaving the disposition of private rights and liberties to bureaucratic mercy.” No matter how one feels about IPRs, there is no doubt that they have fundamentally transformed patent litigation — with the popular conception that they have done so at the expense of patent owners.

Despite their efficacy for patent defendants, however, deployment of IPRs as a first-line defense are not without risk for patent defendants. A failed IPR, for example, can have significant consequences in later or parallel infringement litigation. Indeed, the IPR statute itself contemplates that a defendant will be estopped from relying on the invalidity defense subject to a final written decision in that IPR in later litigation — thereby making the difficult task of proving invalidity in a district court case even harder. Remember, of course, that patents carry with them a presumption of validity, leading to an evidentiary standard for invalidation (clear and convincing evidence) much higher than that at play in an IPR. As a result, the estoppel penalty for losing an IPR serves to make the difficult nigh impossible for patent defendants in a district court case.

Consider a recent example from an extremely high-profile ongoing case — the dispute between the United States government and Gilead over the government’s HIV treatment patents. For its part, Gilead has been a market leader when it comes to filing prophylactic IPRs, targeting patents that it has been approached with for licensing before an infringement case is filed against it. With respect to the HIV treatment patents, Gilead announced in August 2019 that it had filed IPRs in the hopes of eliminating the distraction allegedly caused by the US government’s attempt to license those patents. Instead, the situation escalated, with a district court case alleging infringement filed a few months later. Worse for Gilead, all of its IPR petitions failed to garner institution by the PTAB. While a failure at the institution stage does not ordinarily result in estoppel, there is no doubt that an IPR failure is at least the equivalent of a first-line treatment failing to work. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Gilead has looked for additional defenses against the government’s assertions, including by filing a breach-of-contract case tied to the patents this past Friday.

Unfortunately for Gilead, its failed IPRs against the HIV treatment patents are not even the highest-profile (or costliest, at least for now) IPR failures it has had to endure recently. For that, we need to look at the latest developments in Gilead subsidiary Kite Pharma’s long-running patent dispute with Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Juno. I wrote about the massive jury verdict in that case on these pages back in December, while noting that Kite’s failed prophylactic IPR may have made the patent owners “emboldened to seek maximum redress when and if the patent survives.”

Consistent with that observation, the plaintiffs moved post-trial for enhancement of the already-large jury verdict based on Kite’s alleged willful infringement. And on April 2, 2020, they got their wish, with a 50% enhancement of the damages granted by the trial judge. Had Kite’s cancer treatment not been so critical, the damage could have been worse for new owner Gilead. Even though the potential enhancement for willfulness could have been up to a treble damages award, the addition of hundreds of millions of dollars to one of the biggest patent verdicts of all time only serves to increase the importance of getting things overturned on appeal for Gilead. It should not be ignored, of course, that the failed IPR was a factor in the court’s willfulness determination, accentuating the risk when a defendant acknowledges the value of a patent asserted against it by expending the considerable resources required to file and maintain an IPR against that patent.

Ultimately, both the HIV treatment case and the Kite Pharma one have made Gilead a bit of a poster child for the risks of filing IPRs and losing. Or as I put it in December: “when the IPR kill-shot misses, the repercussions (and the future exposure) are often more serious than if the alleged infringer didn’t take such an aggressive approach.” To be clear, Gilead has plenty of opportunities left to get things right and escape liability in both of the cases. As well as the resources and access to top counsel to put up the best fight possible toward that goal. But no matter the ultimate result, Gilead’s struggles should remind us that IPRs are not without risk to filers. Because even first-line treatments sometimes fail.

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.

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Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique, and Markman Advisors LLC, a leading consultancy on patent issues for the investment community. Gaston’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.

Four years ago, Bill Brewer found himself on the nasty end of a benchslap when a Texas trial judge sanctioned him for issuing a survey testing the public’s appetite for his chosen theory of the case. After these sanctions were upheld on appeal, Brewer finally scores some good news with the Texas Supreme Court tossing the sanctions, finding that Brewer had not acted in bad faith.

Pretrial surveys provide valuable insight into how a potential jury might react to an attorney’s arguments. They could also taint witnesses and the jury pool by improperly laying out a narrative of the case before trial. In this case, Brewer hired a third-party firm to ask some questions about why it might be anyone but his client’s fault that a boy was killed in a gas explosion and this rankled the trial judge when it turned out the poll hit up witnesses and other parties in the case.

The Texas Supreme Court drew the line for sanctions at requiring a showing of “bad faith” and determined that regardless of problems with the survey, there was no reason to believe Brewer intentionally tried to mess with the judicial process when testing his theories:

Certain attributes of the pretrial survey may have been reasonably disconcerting to the trial court, but the record bears no evidence of bad faith in the attorney’s choice to conduct a pretrial survey or in the manner and means of its execution.

Congratulations on clearing up this wrinkle. Now Brewer can return to presiding over the slow dismantling of the National Rifle Association without this nagging problem.

While this is good news for Brewer, it doesn’t accomplish everything he probably wants vis a vis his other ethical trip up in the Eastern District of Virginia. In that court, Brewer found himself earning the ire of the judge after declaring that he’d never been sanctioned despite the fact that this matter had happened two years earlier and had already been affirmed by the appellate court… and the judge was able to find all this out by searching the internet. The firm took the stance that the sanctions didn’t count until all the appeals were exhausted because he hadn’t actually handed over any money at that point. And while the sanctions have now been defeated, the sin in Virginia was never whether or not Brewer had been sanctioned, but that he wasn’t transparent about what was going on when the judge asked the question. Plus, today would be quite the buzzkill for Brewer in Virginia if Texas had come down the other way.

The moral of that story is still to always be forthcoming, especially when the judge knows how to use Google.

(Check out the majority opinion on the next page.)

Earlier: Lawyer Slapped With Big Sanctions For ‘Push Polling’ Potential Jurors
Federal Judge Wants To Hear Why Bigtime Attorney Said He’d Never Been Sanctioned… When He Was TOTALLY Just Sanctioned
NRA May Be Shooting Itself In The Foot With Out-Of-Control Legal Bills
This Is Really Not A Great Couple Of Weeks For Bill Brewer

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Sean Hannity is mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it any more!

“HANNITY SAYS ENOUGH: Sean Sues the New York Times…” his personal webpage blared Monday, in a story credited to “Hannity staff.” As Law & Crime’s Aaron Keller notes, this masterpiece of very serious journalism which accuses the Times of stealth-editing a story about the Fox host, has itself gone through several revisions since it was originally posted yesterday.

At this point, the headline and URL have been revised to “HANNITY SAYS ENOUGH: Sean Demands Retraction and Apology from New York Times After Blaming Him for Coronavirus Deaths.” But as of 1pm, the text still reads, “Something that has been long overdo, Sean Hannity has finally demanded a retraction and apology from the New York Times for their irresponsible and shameful misreporting…”

Which is really overdoing it!

The link to “court documents” takes the reader to a nastygram from Charles “Gawker Killer” Harder to the paper’s General Counsel, Diane Brayton, and columnists Ginia Bellafante, Kara Swisher, and Ben Smith. In twelve pages of bold print howling, Harder excoriates the paper for cruelly libelslandering his client by implying that he led his viewers to believe that coronavirus was a hoax. What about Bill de Blasio? What about Anderson Copper [sic]? What about Nancy Pelosi telling Americans to go to Chinatown and quit being racists? That’s what Charles Harder wants to know!

Hannity’s chief complaint appears to be an April 18 story by Bellafante which describes a regular Hannity viewer who believed the virus was not serious, took a cruise, and wound up succumbing to the disease.

On March 1, Joe Joyce and his wife, Jane, set sail for Spain on a cruise, flying first to Florida. His adult children — Kevin, Eddie and Kristen Mider — suggested that the impending doom of the coronavirus made this a bad idea.

Joe Joyce was 74, a nonsmoker, healthy; four years after he opened his bar he stopped drinking completely. He didn’t see the problem.

“He watched Fox, and believed it was under control,” Kristen told me. Early in March Sean Hannity went on air proclaiming that he didn’t like the way that the American people were getting scared “unnecessarily”…

Eventually, Fox changed course and took the virus more seriously, but the Joyces were long gone by then.

Harder points out that Mr. Joyce had already left for his cruise on March 1, eight days before Hannity called the panic around coronavirus a “hoax.” Harder does not point to numerous comments by his client in February downplaying the seriousness of the virus. Maybe he just forgot!

Luckily, the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple can refresh Hannity’s memory.

And, as Vox was first to report widely, a team of economists associated with the University of Chicago analyzed the data to prove that watching Hannity is bad for your health in the age of COVID.

[G]reater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our results indicate that a one standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Carlson is associated with approximately 30 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14, and 21 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28. Consistent with the gradual convergence in scripts between the two shows beginning in late February, the effects on cases decline from mid-March onwards.

Which is probably why the Times told Harder and Hannity to get lost.

Because when you’re telling a bully to go pound sand, you don’t need twelve pages of inane bluster. You just say “Dear Charles … no.”

HANNITY SAYS ENOUGH: Sean Demands Retraction and Apology from New York Times After Blaming Him for Coronavirus Deaths [Hannity.com]
Hannity Hires Trump Lawyer to Threaten Lawsuit Over New York Times’s ‘False’ Coronavirus Narrative [Law & Crime]
Misinformation During a Pandemic [Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago]

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Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.