A federal lawsuit filed in the US against journalist Andy Ngô by Antifa has been dropped.
The suit, which Ngô's legal representatives and himself said was “nonsensical” and “frivolous” in the way it sought to exploit copyright law – and the use of Twitter – for censorship purposes centered around Ngô retweeting two posts by the plaintiffs, Melissa Lewis and Morgan Grace.
The pair also consider themselves as journalists and wanted Ngô to pay $300,000 as compensation for allegedly violating copyright law when he retweeted two videos of rioting uploaded by them.
However, the lawsuit also states that the authors were credited and the videos shared via Twitter's video-embed feature designed for reposts of the kind.
Less than two weeks after the filing, Lewis and Grace, after speaking with their legal counsel, decided to drop the case.
Ngô was during the same time dubbed a “far right provocateur” by several local left-leaning websites in Oregon – but they seem to now be ignoring the outcome of the ill-fated legal challenge against him.
Other media sources that have covered the case before it was dismissed with a negative slant on Ngô have been the Intercept and the Daily Beast.
Ngô was represented by the Center for American Liberty and its founder Harmeet Dhillon, who tweeted about the outcome of the lawsuit to refer to the two plaintiffs as “Antifans” who were trying to use a federal court to punish a journalist for his “proper use of Twitter.”
