A Superior Court judge late last week denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. against Daily Kos writer David Vickrey.
The suit alleges Vickrey made false statements about Kennedy that damaged Kennedy’s reputation. Vickrey claimed that Kennedy helped cause the deadly Samoa measles outbreak and that he joined “neo-Nazis” and “various anti-Semitic conspiracy groups” when he spoke at a 2020 event in Berlin.
For years, Vickrey repeated the claims on social media, including Daily Kos and Twitter/X, despite being informed that the claims were false.
Kennedy, founder and former chairman of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), is suing for damages. Kennedy is on track to become the next secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In December 2024, Robert Barnes and Terry Mitrenga, two of Kennedy’s attorneys, filed a memo urging the court to deny Vickrey’s motion to dismiss.
Barnes called the court’s ruling a “big win.” He told The Defender:
“The court found that repeating lies about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that have been proven false by prior lawsuits is clear evidence of actual malice toward Kennedy. This means anyone who repeats those lies can now also be sued.”
CHD CEO Mary Holland said, “While this long-running case is not over, the Maine Superior Court delivered a remarkable win for plaintiff Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
Holland added:
“Apparently Vickrey believed he was immune from liability, as he defamed Kennedy for years. Although the standard for proving defamation against a public figure is very high, this decision strongly suggests that Kennedy has more than met it.”
In his decision, Maine Superior Court Justice Thomas R. McKeon noted that Vickrey’s motion to dismiss failed both as a standard motion to dismiss and as a motion to dismiss under Maine’s anti-SLAPP law.
“The anti-SLAPP statute is intended to prevent lawsuits that affect a defendant’s First Amendment rights,” said CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg.
The court found that Vickrey’s activities in publishing his statements about Kennedy failed to fall within the limited scope of the anti-SLAPP law, according to Mack Rosenberg.
“Under Maine’s anti-SLAPP statute, defendants must show that their activity meets the definition of ‘petitioning,’ which is the activity that the statute protects.”
According to the ruling:
“The statute defines petitioning activity as: any written or oral statement made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other government proceeding[,] any statement reasonably likely to encourage consideration or review of an issue by a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other government proceeding [, or] any statement reasonably likely to enlist public participation in an effort to effect such consideration [by a legislative, executive, or judicial body.]”
Vickrey’s statements didn’t meet that definition.
Mitrenga said, “The anti-SLAPP law is usually used when someone is challenging another person’s reason for putting into place, or promoting, a specific government action.”
Kennedy’s case could now go to trial, Mitrenga said. However, Vickrey could first appeal the court’s decision.
Court orders on motions to dismiss aren’t usually appealable, but the Supreme Court of Maine has made an exception when a motion to dismiss is based on an anti-SLAPP claim, Mitrenga said.
Vickrey’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond when asked by The Defender if they plan to appeal.
Lawsuit has dragged on for years
For over four years, Vickrey has attempted to shut down legal efforts to hold him accountable for libel.
Libel is a type of defamation that exposes a person to public hatred or injures their business or profession, according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. Defamation is a statement that injures someone’s reputation.
On Aug. 29, 2020, Daily Kos ran an article, “Anti-Vaxxer RFK JR. joins neo-Nazis in massive Berlin ‘Anti-Corona’ Protest.” Vickrey, who wrote the article, published it under the pseudonym “DowneastDem.”
The article described an Aug. 22, 2020, speech Kennedy delivered to more than 1 million people at the Rally for Peace and Freedom in Berlin, organized by the German group Querdenken 711, or “Critical Thinking 711.”
The article “falsely tarnished Kennedy by associating him with Nazis, anti-Semites and right-wing extremists as organizers of the demonstration,” said Holland, who also spoke at the event in Berlin.
“None of these claims had any merit. The defamation affected CHD as Kennedy was acting as our spokesman,” she said.
As The Defender reported, the Querdenken movement is a broad-based, peaceful citizens’ movement for freedom, peace and human rights. It opposes Nazism and anti-semitism. Among the event’s speakers were doctors, lawyers, clergy of every persuasion, soldiers, police officers, parents, children, world-famous athletes, politicians from Germany’s Green Party, human rights activists and leaders of nonprofit organizations.
An attorney representing Kennedy wrote a letter to Daily Kos, asking the online news site to retract the article, explaining that it contained obvious falsehoods. Daily Kos refused.
On Dec. 1, 2020, CHD’s lawyers filed court papers in the Supreme Court of Westchester County, New York, ordering Daily Kos to show why “DowneastDem’s” identity and contact information should not be disclosed.
“Through rigorous sleuthing,” Holland said, “CHD was able to identify ‘DowneastDem’s’ true identity: David Vickrey.”
Since 2020, Vickrey has continued to publish defamatory statements on Daily Kos and Twitter/X.
In 2023, Kennedy sued Vickrey in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, thinking that Vickrey had a professional connection to that state. However, upon discovery, it became evident that Vickrey’s work relationships in New Hampshire had ended a decade prior.
In January 2024, a New Hampshire federal judge tossed the suit since Vickrey did not write the article in New Hampshire.
Kennedy’s lawyers then filed the case in Maine, where Vickrey lives. CHD is providing financial support for the suit.
The amended complaint alleges Vickrey published statements between May and October 2023 on social media that implied or directly made false claims about Kennedy, including:
- Kennedy helped cause the deadly Samoa measles outbreak.
- Kennedy opposed all vaccines.
- Kennedy expressed “dangerous vaccine conspiracies” that caused the death of 234,000 Americans.
- Kennedy wanted to cause the death of Black people.
- Kennedy said COVID-19 was designed to save Jews.
- A simple German-to-English translation of a German newspaper reporter’s article said Kennedy knowingly joined, supported and associated with a neo-Nazi party, the National Democratic Party of Germany, in Berlin.
“Each of Vickrey’s factual statements about me are false,” Kennedy stated in his affidavit.
In his decision, McKeon said that Kennedy had adequately shown that Vickrey had published the defamatory statements “with actual malice.”
That was important because “if the plaintiff is a public figure, the publisher is only at fault if they published the defamatory statement with actual malice,” McKeon wrote.
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‘Censorship and spreading of untruths have gone hand in hand’
Mack Rosenberg said that Vickrey is free to have opinions that differ from Kennedy’s — but he shouldn’t be allowed to spread false information about Kennedy.
Freedom of speech is not the same as libel. “Libel is not afforded constitutional protection,” Mack Rosenberg explained. She said libel can be an “insidious form of censorship” because it spreads false information designed to deter people from considering a speaker’s viewpoint.
“Particularly in the past few years,” Mack Rosenberg said, “censorship and spreading of untruths have gone hand-in-hand to attempt to silence those who challenge a certain narrative, accusing them of spreading misinformation and disinformation, when in fact, many times it is those seeking to silence them who are spreading falsehoods.”
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