Polish journalist wins authorized battle towards US activist – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

WARSAW, Poland – (AP) – A Polish journalist who labeled a US conservative activist as part of a global war against democracy by right-wing actors with indirect ties to Russia has won a year-long legal battle with the Americans.

Matthew Tyrmand, an American with Polish roots, has written for Breitbart and is a board member of Project Veritas, which carries out undercover stitches against media organizations trying to expose what they believe is left-wing.

Tyrmand sued Polish journalist Tomasz Piatek and Agora, editor of the liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, over a 2016 article describing Tyrmand as “part of the right-wing global war on democracy” and a supporter of Donald Trump, who was not yet the US President.

Tyrmand criticized several points in the article, including the description of him as “Trump’s man” and the allegation that he had an indirect connection with Russia because of Trump’s sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also refused to allow Piatek to write that Project Veritas was waging “information warfare”.

Claiming the 2016 article was defamatory, Tyrmand sued Piatek, losing a first case and also appealing.

The lower court judge argued that describing Tyrmand as part of Trump’s circle when written for Breitbart and associated with other pro-Trump political actors was not defamatory. A three-person jury at the appeals court upheld this decision, although one of the three disagreed.

The appeals court ruling went into effect earlier this week after a deadline expired for Tyrmand to appeal to the country’s Supreme Court.

Tyrmand told The Associated Press that he had decided to end his lawsuit because he had “little confidence” in a fair hearing if he proceeded, claiming the Polish courts were “politicized”.

“I have decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court because frankly my confidence in the apolitical judiciary is somewhere between low and not after reading the appeals court’s ridiculousness,” Tyrmand said in a message posted on Wednesday.

Piatek, who has written books examining alleged connections between people in politics, business and the media with pro-Kremlin groups, welcomed the verdict.

“It is a victory for the truth,” he told the AP on Thursday from Warsaw.

The name Tyrmand is known in Poland because the activist’s father is the late Leopold Tyrmand, a well-known dissident and writer from the Polish-Jewish communist era who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States in the 1960s.

During the US presidential campaign in 2016, Tyrmand distributed the film “Clinton Cash” in Poland, in which the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was portrayed as a prisoner of wealthy foreign interests.

At the same time, he was also writing articles for Breitbart News, led by Steve Bannon, who later became Trump’s chief strategist. Tyrmand also had friendly relations with some members of the conservative Polish government.

Piatek and the editors of Gazeta Wyborcza believed that Tyrmand’s case against them was part of a wider effort by the government and its kind people to have a terrifying effect on their journalists.

Tyrmand has denied this, saying he is fighting to defend his reputation.

During the first trial, Tyrmand argued that the article linked him “in this weak guilt by association with Vladimir Putin”. He called it the “greatest calumny and blurring” possible in a part of Europe that has “achieved independence from Soviet tyranny”.

Tyrmand also argued that it was unfair to call him a supporter of Trump, arguing that at the time of the article’s publication, he was still supporting Republican challenger Ted Cruz.