Judge tosses Michael Flynn family members’ lawsuit against CNN over ‘QAnon followers’ report

This is a screenshot of a video of Michael Flynn and family from July 4, 2020, which appeared in a CNN segment describing it as a QAnon oath.

The brother and sister-in-law of former Trump national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn lost out in their attempt to sue CNN over a 2021 segment on QAnon, a report that showed a video of several Flynn family members saying the “Where we go one, we go all” slogan known to be associated with the conspiracy theory and its adherents.

Jack and Leslie Flynn’s argument that the CNN segment “falsely painted them as ‘QAnon followers’” did not fare well before U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, who dismissed the lawsuit Wednesday, saying, “This case is not a tossup.” Much of the opinion pointed out that QAnon movement is an “amorphous, undefined concept,” such that calling someone a “QAnon follower,” which the judge said CNN didn’t explicitly do here, falls into the realm on non-actionable opinion, like calling someone a fascist.

“The Flynns have not carried their burden to provide evidence showing that the meaning of ‘QAnon follower’ is any less ‘debatable, loose and varying,’ so the same conclusion follows. QAnon has, in many ways, taken on a life of its own, becoming a sort of ‘undefined slogan[] that [is] part of the conventional give-and-take in our economic and political controversies—like … ‘fascist,’” the judge wrote. “No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative. That’s opinion.”

The judge noted that the “core public concern” of CNN’s report was exploring the nexus between powerful and QAnon — that is, “whether those in power were involved” with the conspiracy theory “and to what extent.”

“The clip of Michael Flynn—President Trump’s first National Security Advisor—saying a phrase associated with QAnon certainly addresses that concern, even if the Flynns think it was totally innocent,” Subramanian wrote.

While the judge concluded QAnon is too “fluid” a movement to have a fixed meaning, he said that even “QAnon followership is verifiable,” the Flynns would “still fail” to win.

“Calling the Flynns ‘QAnon followers’ was a conclusion based on the following disclosed, nondefamatory facts: (1) the Flynns stood with Michael Flynn, their right hands raised, as he recited the phrase ‘where we go one, we go all,’ and (2) the phrase was a QAnon slogan,” the judge said. “The Flynns don’t fight these facts. On the first part, they haven’t challenged the clip’s authenticity. As to the second, they say they didn’t know that the phrase was a QAnon slogan.”

Subramanian further concluded that that the context of the CNN segment shows the Flynns weren’t explicitly called “QAnon followers,” but that questions were raised about whether they might be, given the utterance of “Where we go one, we go all.”

“It is not enough that they merely appeared in a video that also included QAnon followers. Several reporters and news anchors appear in the video, but it’s obvious from context that the video isn’t calling them ‘QAnon followers,’” the judge said, before pointing to the Flynns’ own admissions. “And as noted above, the Flynns admit that they were ‘friendly’ and partly ‘aligned with QAnon,’ often posting or reposting QAnon-related content.”

Jack Flynn himself described QAnon adherents as “[j]ust People doing their own research and learning independence of thought to find the truth,” the opinion also recounted.

In the end, the judge ordered the court clerk to “close this case,” finding that, “even assuming that the CNN report could imply that the Flynns were QAnon followers, that statement isn’t actionable.”

Read the opinion here.

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