First Amendment attorney Bob Corn-Revere has spent several decades defending free speech, yet he says he’s almost never seen anything like Donald Trump’s attack on our most basic Constitutional rights. Corn-Revere, who is with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), successfully defended Iowa pollster Ann Selzer after the president sued her for incorrectly predicting he would lose Iowa in the 2024 election. Corn-Revere joined Raw America Live with managing editor Carl Gibson on Tuesday, where the two covered various topics like:
Defeating Trump’s lawsuit against Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register
Trump’s lengthy history of using the court system to silence journalists and critics
Whether the Supreme Court could enable Trump to ratchet up his attacks on press freedom
ABC and Disney’s lawsuit against Trump’s FCC and Chairman Brendan Carr
A Republican senator’s request for the FCC investigate ABC News for reporting on Trump’s sons
The White House’s attempt to lock out reporters from CNN, Politico, MS NOW and Raw America
Why media companies, law firms and universities who give in to Trump’s bullying always lose
Trump’s DOJ prosecuting nonviolent protesters in Minnesota and Chicago
How people who lack the funding to hire lawyers can still fight back
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How Corn-Revere Beat Trump in Court
In late September, an Iowa judge dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against both the Des Moines Register and J. Ann Selzer, who is one of the most respected political pollsters in the country. Trump accused both the Register and Selzer of committing consumer fraud after Selzer’s final poll showed he could potentially lose Iowa to then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, though Trump ended up winning the Hawkeye State.
Corn-Revere made sure to credit lawyers who represented the Register, who litigated the case alongside Corn-Revere and FIRE, before explaining why Judge Scott J. Beattie ruled in favor of the defendants two years after the election.
“The case went through a lot of procedural wrangling, went up to federal court, got sent back to state court, and then ultimately we had briefing and a hearing before Judge Scott Beatty in Polk County, Iowa,” Corn-Revere explained. “And he issued a 64-and-a-half-page opinion dismissing all claims very decisively.”
Gibson noted that in Corn-Revere’s statement after the ruling, he called Trump’s lawsuit “laughable” and said the First Amendment “doesn’t allow anyone in government, least of all the president, to punish people under the banner of ‘fake news.’” Corn-Revere agreed with Gibson’s assertion that the president was using the power of the courts in an attempt to bully his critics into silence.
“I don’t want to get bogged down in legal jargon, but I think the appropriate legal term for this lawsuit is ‘forehead-slappingly stupid,’” Corn-Revere said. “And it goes way back to Donald Trump’s tactics from long before he was in politics.”
The First Amendment expert reminded viewers that long before Trump entered politics, he sued the Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic for calling one of his proposed real estate developments ugly, and then later filed a suit against a writer who, in Trump’s view, undercounted the eventual president’s net worth. Corn-Revere said Trump has been been behind roughly 30 defamation suits against journalists since the 1980s and has yet to win a single one. He has, however, pressured defendants into giving him millions of dollars in settlements since he was reelected.
“He now has the machinery of the federal government, which he can bring to bear and pressure people into making settlements of otherwise frivolous claims,” Corn-Revere said. “The question now with Trump 2.0 is whether or not people have the staying power, whether or not they will stand up and fight for their rights.”
Trump Setting His Sights on a Major Press Freedom Case
The president has repeatedly said he wants to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, the ruling that allows journalists to cover public officials without fear of being financially ruined by frivolous lawsuits. With the midterms exactly three weeks away and Democrats poised to retake one or both chambers of Congress and hold hearings that will reveal unflattering details about both Trump and his business dealings, Gibson asked if it was a possibility that the 6-3 conservative supermajority Supreme Court could re-hear the case and give Trump the result he wants.
Corn-Revere emphasized his belief that the case’s underlying precedent in the case is airtight, but acknowledged that the origins of the case have a lot in common with press freedom today. As the prominent First Amendment attorney explained, that case stemmed from efforts by segregationists in the Deep South to punish newspapers in the North for covering the Civil Rights Movement. The Times initially had to pay Alabama Public Safety Commissioner L.B. Sullivan $500,000 in a libel verdict over minor factual errors, though the Supreme Court ultimately overturned it in its landmark 1964 ruling.
“It got to the point where the Times was not sending reporters to the South to report on the Civil Rights Movement,” he said. “What we’re seeing today is sort of a return to those kinds of tactics, use of bogus litigation by government officials to try and silence speakers and journalists that they don’t like.”
Corn-Revere explained the high bar to prove defamation is exactly why Trump opted to sue Selzer and the Register for consumer fraud instead of libel. He added that while Justices Neil Gorsuch (a Trump appointee) and Clarence Thomas (who was appointed by George H.W. Bush) have expressed an interest in re-litigating the case, the rest of the Supreme Court has indicated a lack of interest in doing so.
“I don’t think that precedent is in any danger,” he said.
Trump’s FCC Chair Engaging in ‘Record-Breaking Levels of Hypocrisy’
The conversation then pivoted to Disney and ABC’s ongoing lawsuit against Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its chairman, Brendan Carr, who authored the section of Project 2025 pertaining to the FCC. Gibson recounted how the FCC is now making the move to force the license renewal process for ABC’s eight owned stations many years ahead of schedule after Trump has consistently singled out the network for critical coverage of his administration.
Corn-Revere said while it’s common for there to be some litigation surrounding license renewal, an FCC threatening to revoke licenses for political reasons is uncharted territory.
“There has never been an effort like this that was so nakedly political and on such a broad scale to go after a network’s licenses. It really is unprecedented,” he said. “And for Brendan Carr, who used to fancy himself to be a free speech warrior before he became chairman, it is, I think, record-breaking levels of hypocrisy.”
He laid out how the FCC has consistently escalated its efforts to clamp down on Trump’s critics. First there’s rhetorical pressure, then investigations, followed by a re-interpretation of the rules specifically aimed at shows like The View, and finally the surprise demand for early broadcast license renewals.
This issue is uniquely personal for Corn-Revere, who was once chief counsel to then-FCC chairman James Quello in his career in the 1990s during the Clinton administration.
“To see the FCC’s rules and policies being misused to such a great extent, it is really astonishing to see,” Corn-Revere said.
Gibson noted that even though the FCC has no jurisdiction over online media, Republicans like Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio seem to think otherwise. This week, Moreno sent a letter to the agency asking it to investigate an ABC News online report about the billions of dollars in federal contracts that have consistently been awarded to companies linked to the president’s eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.
“It is using simply the coercion that we’re going to make life miserable for you if you don’t do what we say,” Corn-Revere said of the Trump FCC. “It was historically understood that the FCC was designed to be a bipartisan, non-political agency, therefore to manage the law in a very technical way, and it was supposed to steer clear of politics. Those norms have been broken, and that has to be restored, regardless whether or not courts hold them to the letter of the law.”
The Battle to Restore Press Freedom at the White House
Trump announced on social media last month that he would be barring reporters from CNN, Politico and MS NOW from accessing the White House. He’s also revoked credentials for Raw America White House correspondent Brian Karem without any notice or explanation. Gibson noted that at the state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping, David Ellison — who became the new owner of CNN’s parent company last week — sat at the table with Trump and Xi while CNN’s reporters were locked out of the event.
Gibson then asked about the effects of media organizations presenting a united front in the face of Trump’s actions. Corn-Revere noted that early on in Trump’s second term law firms and universities who caved in the face of executive orders targeting them ended up suffering anyway.
“Those who capitulate don’t really fare all that well,” Corn-Revere said, pointing out that prominent firms lost major clients while other firms that stood firm didn’t. He also pointed to four separate law firms that sued and later won injunctions.
“I think they won not just in court; they also won in the court of public opinion,” he said.
“If you look historically at the way the First Amendment has developed, the history of our free speech protections has been written by the ones who stood up,” Corn-Revere continued. “The ones who took the risks that they might lose, but still forged those really critically important First Amendment principles that we all rely on today.”
Standing Up and Fighting Back Is a Winning Strategy
Gibson highlighted the recent example of J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register winning in Iowa state court as proof that fighting back against Trump’s attacks on the First Amendment can pay bug dividends, and contrasting their efforts with law firms like Paul Weiss giving in. He also noted that while ABC settled Trump’s lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’s comments about writer E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict against Trump, its parent company, Disney, is now fighting back against Trump’s FCC.
Corn-Revere also heaped praise on media outlets that expressed solidarity toward the reporters and outlets that had their press credentials revoked, calling it “very heartening and very impressive.” And he further warned that ceding ground to authoritarians will only offer the illusion of temporary safety.
“Giving in to a bully is really short-term thinking. It isn’t going to be a sound strategy for the long term,” the FIRE attorney said. “Even though you’re rolling the dice and you don’t know what a court may do, the only sure path to security is to stand on your rights.”
Trump Prosecutes Ideas Instead of Acts
Gibson observed that Trump’s attacks on basic Constitutional rights go well beyond newsrooms. He pointed to the case of the Minnesota 15, in which anti-ICE protesters who helped organize nonviolent resistance and surveillance efforts to the administration’s immigration crackdown this winter have since been charged with federal crimes. Gibson warned that federal prosecutors, appear to be treating anti-fascism as a crime, even though Antifa is an idea and not an actual organization.
“That’s part of the problem,” Corn-Revere said. “The overall focus of this administration has been to try and criminalize ideologies and not acts.”
The First Amendment attorney made it clear that while acts of violence or physical attacks on police can be punished under the law, things like Trump’s September 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum that allows for surveillance of all anti-American, anti-capitalist and anti-Christian beliefs is a far more sinister threat to the First Amendment.
“You see those kinds of directives being followed by ICE and other agencies in going way overboard in how they both conduct surveillance and how they crack down on dissent,” he said.
Gibson then pivoted to the case of the Broadview Six, in which six anti-ICE protesters were arrested outside the Broadview ICE detention facility in the Chicago area — one of whom was then-Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh.
The federal judge overseeing the case found evidence that prosecutors had potentially manipulated the grand jury process to secure what appeared to be politically motivated charges. This led to Trump’s Justice Department dropping the case entirely rather than be further embarrassed in the discovery process. Gibson asked whether a future Democratic-led Congress or Democratic attorney general could press for sanctions or disbarment for the prosecutors involved in the case.
“It is possible that legal officials who have misused the law can face sanctions like disbarment. We’ve seen that kind of thing happen in the past,” Corn-Revere said.
However, he countered that merely switching the party in charge won’t fix the problem by itself. FIRE — which Corn-Revere reminded viewers is a nonpartisan organization — has also been involved in litigation against Democratic officials, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $787 million defamation suit against Fox News as it originally included a consumer fraud allegation.
“What I hate to see is the two parties, even though they are going at each other, learning the bad habits of each other,” Corn-Revere said. “What we try to do is maintain the same set of legal principles that binds both sides and protects we the people from that kind of overreach, regardless of which direction it’s coming from.”
How to Fight Back When You Can’t Afford a Lawyer
In Vermont, protesters have been consistently mobilizing outside of an ICE surveillance center that gives field agents data to track down and arrest immigrants. The Intercept reported last week that both state and federal prosecutors have officially filed criminal charges organizers of a planned week of action right before it was set to begin, prompting allegations of the government using the machinery of the legal system to chill dissent. Gibson asked Corn-Revere how people who can’t afford to mount a legal defense against the government can survive when the state clamps down on them.
“That’s one of the reasons why organizations like FIRE exist. We represent people without charge, and we take as many cases as we possibly can,” Corn-Revere said. “It has been a boom time for that kind of thing.”
He described how one man — David Streaver of Rochester, New York — sent an angry email to the acting director of ICE after agents gunned down U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Several months after that email, ICE agents showed up at his door with a notice warning that he may have broken federal law by threatening a public official.
“There was no threat here, nothing even remotely like a threat,” Corn-Revere said. “It was simply someone registering a protest with the government.” FIRE took the case and won an injunction against ICE.
To close the interview, Gibson asked what Corn-Revere would say to people who are hesitant to join a protest, or even contact their elected officials out of fear that the Trump administration could come after them.
“First of all, I want to say that I understand the risks, and it is not easy to show fortitude when you have, especially, this kind of belligerent overreach by government officials,” he said. “But it pays to think more in the long term as well, and to think over the course of American history, it has been those people who are willing to stand up that made sure that the principles that this country was founded on have continued.”
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The Trump administration is counting on its aggressive attacks on the First Amendment to scare Americans away from exercising their Constitutional rights. But as Bob Corn-Revere has shown, even those without the resources to fight back in the face of these tactics can not only stand up — they can win. News outlets owned by MAGA billionaires like David Ellison won’t platform people like Corn-Revere, but we can. Because we answer to no billionaire or corporate parent. We answer only to readers like you. And we’ll keep it that way as long as we’re around.
