Snowflake Tim Pool Files Defamation Trollsuit Against Kamala Harris Campaign

Does he think we'll be so busy pointing and laughing that we'll quit talking about that Russia thing?

Last night, rightwing Beanie Baby Tim Pool announced that he was suing Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. 

“I am suing the Harris campaign for defaming me, for claiming that I had called for the extrajudicial execution of Donald Trump’s political opponents,” he thundered on his eponymous podcast, the Tim Pool DEFINITELY NOT A RUSSIAN ASSET Propaganda Hour. (It may have a different official title.)

“They literally said that I was a Trump operative with a Project 2025 plan calling for legal authorities — beyond the scope of legal authorities — that would allow Trump to jail and execute anyone who refused to support him if he wins,” he continued, affecting grievous injury from this monstrous attack.

Pool’s guest was professional shitstirrer Andrew Wilson. He’s a charmer.

But Wilson understood the assignment. 

“How does things like this, like the Harris campaign saying things like this about the Timcast and you, not actually put your life in danger?” he said, as if on cue.

This provided Tim the opportunity to hyperventilate while reading some of his own VERY SERIOUS complaint.

It was at this point that we wandered off into the wilds of PACER and quit watching, because NOT TODAY, SATAN. Perhaps what followed was an erudite discussion of the finer points of First Amendment law. But the complaint itself is garbage.

After several paragraphs touting his millions of followers, thereby establishing that he is 100 percent a public figure who’ll have to prove actual malice under the New York Times v. Sullivan standard, Timmy finally got to the point. 

The “political commentator whose views defy simple categorization” is very mad about an August 31 tweet by the Harris campaign which showed a video of him fantasizing about locking up Democrats for supposed “crimes.”

“When Donald Trump gets elected, should he start locking them up? No question,” Pool vamped in the clip. “Should there be lists of Democrats that need to go to jail? 100 percent.”

“Not just jail. They should get the death penalty,” countered his guest Laura Loomer, the rightwing freakshow who is definitely not having an affair with Donald Trump.

The @KamalaHQ account captioned the video: “Trump operatives say their Project 2025 plan is to give Trump total, unchecked legal power so they can jail and execute those who don’t support Trump if he wins,” adding parenthetically that “They have since scrubbed this video from YouTube.”

“To any reasonable reader, the Harris Campaign was saying that Mr. Pool wants to suspend the Constitution, make President Trump dictator, and use state power to imprison and kill Mr. Pool and President Trump's political opponents,” he fulminated in his lawsuit, adding that “Both the clip and its context demonstrate Mr. Pool’s commitment to civil liberties.” 

The fact that the campaign tweeted out the clip showcasing his “commitment to civil liberties” would appear to undermine the claim that the text, which didn’t even mention him, could only be understood to be calling him a happy fascist. Nevertheless, Pool demands millions of dollars — not rubles! — to make him whole.

“The reputational harm the Harris Campaign inflicted on Mr. Pool will take millions of dollars to undo,” he moans.

There are one or two potential problems with this complaint. To start with, Pool appears to have the wrong defendant. Ooopsie!

Pool sued “Harris for President,” which he alleges is the “principal campaign committee for the Harris campaign, with a registered address in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

A principal campaign committee is a legal entity organized pursuant to 52 U.S.C. § 30102(e) to raise and disburse funds on behalf of a Presidential candidate and to file reports to the Federal Election Commission. It is not generally responsible for sending out tweets — in fact, it would be illegal for it to do so. The campaign and its crew of feral 25-year-olds is in charge of flaming Trump online, and they operate under BFPCC, Inc., formerly known as “Biden for President Campaign Committee,” now called “Harris for President.” But that entity is not located in Philadelphia; it’s organized under the laws of Delaware with its principal place of business in Wilmington.

So when Pool claims to be suing “a principal campaign committee with a registered address in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania” that “operates an account on X under the handle @KamalaHQ which links to the internet website www.kamalaharris.com,” he’s just wrong. And while that may seem like a technicality, to establish diversity jurisdiction and get into federal court, you have to allege that the parties reside in two different states. You really can’t just guess!

Sure, Pool’s lawyers could spend five seconds Googling and refile the complaint with the right defendant. But it’s not a great start.

Second, Tim’s lawyers seem to have tried to ensure that they’ll get paid by adding a count of “bad faith misconduct” so as to allow for the recovery of attorney’s fees under West Virginia law. And while they are correct that extreme bad faith can serve as the basis for awarding attorneys’ fees to the prevailing party in state court, fee-shifting is a form of equitable relief typically unavailable in federal court, where Tim brought suit. It’s dubious that any court would allow Pool to double dip, as it were, and point to the underlying allegations of defamation as evidence of “bad faith,” since that term is usually confined to conduct during the litigation itself. In any event, Pool’s assertion that he is entitled to recover attorneys’ fees because the defamatory statement “caused Mr. Pool to incur legal expenses he would not otherwise have to pay,” is definitely not the law.

And then there’s the minor problem that Pool doesn’t appear to have alleged that the tweet itself was defamatory, much less that it satisfies the actual malice standard for a public figure who is “a social media content creator with millions of followers across numerous platforms.”

Pool protests that the tweet is false because he “supports President Trump’s 2024 bid for the White House” but is not a “Trump operative.” Whether or not that’s a real distinction is debatable, but the tweet does not name him, and it could certainly be referring to Loomer, who has been flying around on Trump’s plane and spewing campaign talking points. And, not for nothing, but Looomer did advocate for the death penalty for Trump’s enemies.

Pool devotes several paragraphs to claiming that he is a staunch opponent of the death penalty, claiming it’s defamatory to associate him with calls to “jail and execute” anyone. He even includes multiple tweets saying things like, “I completely oppose the death penalty, I don’t think anyone deserves to die.” And so it is rather inconvenient that, after they cut the YouTube feed because Loomer’s bloodthirsty comments violated the platform’s terms of service, Tim and the tools picked back up on Rumble where Pool told his viewers, “I actually don’t take any issue at all with what Laura said. I actually completely agree that people who commit treason should get the death penalty.”

Here’s a fun clip from Sam Seder and the crew over at Minority Report:

Pool vaguely gestures in the direction of actual malice by alleging that Harris’s comms team must have been intimately familiar with his oeuvre if they were posting a video that was three months old. But then he admits that you wouldn’t have to comb through his back catalogue of derp to find it, since Mediate covered the episode in June. Also, Pool notes that Mediaite “focused on Ms. Loomer,” further undercutting the claim that the clip was unambiguously referring to him.

And you really can’t just yaddayaddayadda over the actual malice requirement by mumbling, “The Harris Campaign exhibited actual malice by claiming that Mr. Pool supported lawlessness and extrajudicial killings when he made no such claim and despite the campaign's apparent research into Mr. Pool and his views.” No, not even if you throw in a conclusory statement that the campaign’s conduct “was at all times carried out in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, and/or for oppressive reasons.”

But other than those minor nitpicks, this is an excellent filing that will certainly stop people talking about that unpleasant affair with the Kremlin agent paying Pool $100,000 a week to shout “Ukraine is the enemy!” Way to turn the page, little buddy!

Editors Note: This post is coming to you a day early because, when the complaint dropped, we started laughing and typing immediately. We’ll be back to our usual Monday/Thursday posts next week.