Abigail Spanberger Caught Up in Defamation Lawsuit After Her Campaign Secretly Wrote Jan. 6 Press Releasehttps://www.dailysignal.com/2025/09/14/abigail-spanberger-dodges-defamation-questions-press-release-her-campaign-drafted/RICHMOND, VIRGINIA—Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat nominee for Virginia governor, has been called as a witness in a defamation lawsuit after Democrat operatives said her congressional reelection campaign drafted a 2022 Democratic Party of Virginia press release that claimed a Republican “bloodied and beat law enforcement officers” on Jan. 6, 2021.
Thomas Speciale, a retired Army intelligence officer and former Republican U.S. Senate candidate, appeared in court Friday, defending a list of 350 written questions he submitted for Spanberger to answer under oath. The questions grew out of a suit he has filed against the Democratic Party of Virginia alleging that the charge he engaged in violence defamed him. The attorney representing the Democratic Party of Virginia, Jeffrey Breit, defended objections to the questions on the grounds of irrelevance.
Breit cited a press release Speciale had published about the case, warning that if Spanberger’s answers to certain questions became public, she would face harassment.
Speciale defended his list of wide-ranging questions, saying they may be relevant to show that Spanberger’s campaign, from which he says the press release originated, knowingly defamed him.
“The case is very specific to the Spanberger campaign drafting, editing and approving a press release which they sent to the Democratic Party of Virginia to publish,” Speciale told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “They did this in a deliberate effort to conceal that the press release was from the Spanberger campaign.”
“The press release defames me, stating that I was a ‘notable insurrectionist who attacked the United States Capitol’ and that I ‘bloodied and beat law enforcement,'” Speciale added. “The truth is the exact opposite—I was warning the government of possible violence at the National Counterterrorism Center and the FBI, and I was there trying to stop potential violence on January 6th.”
Looks like a prominent Dem may soon learn that the 1st Amendment does not protect slander and that the USSC has narrowed the "Public Figure" defense. As for,
"(Breit) warning that if Spanberger’s answers to certain questions became public, she would face harassment," ummmm, if she did something shady or worse, consequences would seem rather appropriate. Her lawyer all but admitted that if she answered honestly, it would reveal something shady (or ...) that she did.
