Matthew Sanderson Comments on Campaign Advertising

This year, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign filed defamation lawsuits against three of the country’s most prominent news outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Then it filed another suit against a somewhat lower-profile news organization: northern Wisconsin’s WJFW-TV, which serves the 134th-largest market in the country.

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So if Trump isn’t likely to win, what might he be trying to do? Matthew Sanderson, who served as counsel for Sens. John McCain and Mitt Romney, said he thinks the Trump campaign is “engaging in scare tactics.”

“The reason in my opinion that the Trump campaign is filing these types of lawsuits is not necessarily to punish the Wisconsin station — they’re not going to be successful,” Sanderson said. “The reason they’re doing this is to send a message to the rest of the stations to be careful” about running anti-Trump ads.

Matthew Sanderson is also a Member of the Political Law Group at Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered.

For the full article, please visit ProPublica's website.