Yet, here's where the legal trouble could begin in the prologue:
"Many of the accounts of what has happened in the Trump White House are in conflict with one another; many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue. These conflicts, and that looseness with the truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book.Law And Crime's Ronn Blitzer, a lawyer, has the rundown:
"Sometimes I have let the players offer their versions, in turn allowing the reader to judge them. In other instances I have, through a consistency in the accounts and through sources I have come to trust, settled on a version of events I believe to be true."
So Wolff flat out says that he believes that at least some of his sources were lying to him, and while he attributes some accounts to their sources, he acknowledges that this isn't always the case.Yet, Blitzer says that there are some areas, where Wolff can mount a defense. First, the sources for some of these accounts are dubious, so he's not technically saying this is 100 percent true. In essence, if he thought the information he was receiving was true, then it could be argued that he didn't act with malice, even if the account, or multiple accounts, turn out to be dead wrong. Then again, this is lawfare. This won't stop people incensed enough from filing a lawsuit, even if there is an adequate defense for Wolff.
This could be problematic for Wolff. He's being accused of including fiction in what's presented as a non-fiction book, and he admits that not all of his sources were trustworthy, but he doesn't specify what's fact true and what's false. On its face, this sounds like a classic candidate for a defamation case.
Let's run through the elements for a defamation claim. There has to be a statement that is 1) false, 2) defamatory, 3) published to a third party, and in the case of statements about public figures (like those included in Wolff's book), 4) with "Actual malice," meaning knowledge that the statement is false, or reckless disregard for whether it's true.
[...]
Wolff insisted to NBC's Savannah Guthrie, "I am certainly and absolutely, in every way, comfortable with everything I've reported in this book." That may be the case, but he may not be comfortable with the potential influx of lawsuits heading his way.
Comment: That's what happens when you write a book based on gossip, and then pretend it is journalism. Of course, much of that gossip is probably true, but a whole lot more is likely to be either exaggerations or lies. See also:
"Fire and Fury" author Wolff says he doesn't know if his claims are true, said "whatever was necessary" to get the story