NC-AG: Dan Bishop (R) files defamation lawsuit against Jeff Jackson's (D) campaign in NC AG race

U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop is suing his opponent’s campaign for defamation. Earlier this month, Bishop and his campaign for North Carolina attorney general filed a defamation suit against U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson’s campaign, the state Democratic Party, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, and a company that conducts polls and surveys, for claims about his legal career that he said are false. The suit, filed Oct. 3 in Union County Superior Court and first reported by Courthouse News Service, states that Bishop has been defamed by claims that he represented clients who stole from the elderly.

The suit states that in July, the firm Dynata called a Union County voter to conduct a political survey, and asked them if they would be more or less likely to vote for Bishop if they “knew that, as a lawyer, he represented people who stole money from the elderly?”

Bishop states in the lawsuit that the question presented the claim as a “factual assertion,” and said that the question could have been asked of hundreds of other voters as part of the survey. The Republican congressman states that in his nearly 30 years of private practice, he never “represented people who stole from the elderly.”

The lawsuit states the claim “vaguely echoes” reporting by The New Republic earlier this year, which wrote in June that as an attorney, Bishop “worked multiple times with organizations accused of questionable business practices.” In the suit, Bishop claims that the story was “riddled with falsehoods,” and was republished last month with “substantial changes,” after his lawyers contacted The New Republic about “defamatory content” in the article.



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