We need your help offsetting the cost of defending ourselves against the former police chief’s lawsuit threat.

By Erica C. Barnett

Former Seattle police chief Adrian Diaz, who was removed from his position earlier this year, threatened to sue PubliCola, and me personally, unless we removed a post describing the interview he did with conservative talk show host Jason Rantz.

In that interview, Diaz came out as gay and called the allegations in a complaint filed by several women, which included sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, “absurd.” (Since Diaz’ interview, four of the women have filed a lawsuit against the city and SPD.)

In his threat against PubliCola, Diaz claimed we had defamed him by suggesting that he considered being gay a defense against claims that he harassed or made sexual overtures to women. Many other observers, including KIRO radio, the Seattle Times, and the South Seattle Emerald, had a similar interpretation of Diaz’ interview, but as far as we were able to ascertain by speaking with other outlets, PubliCola was the only publication the former chief singled out for an explicit lawsuit threat.

Because our post was not libelous, we did not remove it; instead, we hired our own lawyers to fight back, which is what we would expect from any media outlet threatened by a baseless libel lawsuit.

We’re very glad to say that the matter is finally resolved, thanks to the capable work of our attorneys, who went above and beyond in responding to Diaz’ legal threats. However, high-quality representation is extremely expensive, and we were forced to spend many thousands of dollars on attorneys’ fees. That money came directly out of PubliCola’s budget, which funds our day to day operations as a small, independent, free publication.

Would you help us out by contributing what you can to offset the cost of our legal representation? (Other options, including Venmo, check, and subscription options, on our Support page). If 50 people can give $200 each, we’ll be well on our way to recouping our legal fees, which we expect to come in somewhere in the low five figures. If ten of you can give $1,000, we can knock out our legal bills this week.

This isn’t just about PubliCola, although I can’t overstate how much we need and appreciate your help defraying these major expenses. If public officials can silence journalists by threatening them with baseless lawsuits, it isn’t just one publication that’s vulnerable—it’s any journalist who makes powerful public figures mad by reporting on them, providing analysis, and holding them accountable.

The lawsuit threat was the first communication PubliCola received from Diaz. SPD’s communications office never requested changes to the post or respond to it any way.

In their initial letter, Diaz’ lawyers claimed that my post “contains multiple false and defamatory statements and you should retract it immediately—not just because it opens you and Publicola [sic] up to a libel lawsuit, but because it’s what any responsible journalist would do.” The letter, which arrived just before noon on a Thursday, gave PubliCola until 3pm the following to take the post down or get sued.

“We hope that won’t be necessary, and that you have the integrity to retract the post without further prompting. Please let us know when you and Publicola [sic] will delete the post,” the attorneys, Mark Thomson and Andy Phillips, with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch, wrote.

The word “integrity” was followed by a footnote referencing a college journalism textbook.

PubliCola stands by our post about Rantz’s Diaz interview, and we do not admit any liability, factual errors, or anything else in our agreement with Diaz. The post remains online with minor edits, made after an iterative process with Diaz’ attorneys, that do not change our original reporting or analysis of the interview.

In some cases, these edits provide clarity Diaz felt was lacking (for example, adding the name of Diaz’ local attorney, Ted Buck, to the article, since Diaz believed one reference could be interpreted as referring to Diaz himself); in others, we are attempting to avoid the considerable expense that would be involved in fighting a lawsuit by the former police chief—a powerful, highly connected man with ambitions to become the police chief in Austin, Texas. The changes are edits agreed upon during legal negotiations, not corrections.

For example, the post now says that Diaz “suggested that his being gay undermines the claims of the women who have accused him of with sexual harassment, discrimination, and creating a hostile work environment.” We also removed a parenthetical sentence unrelated to the subject of the story, which briefly summarized a KUOW story that Diaz and Rantz discussed during their conversation.

Diaz’ attorneys noted that Diaz told Rantz, “just because you’re a gay man doesn’t mean you can’t be a misogynist,” which we agreed to add to the post along with some context from the interview:

In the interview, Rantz asked Diaz, “in retrospect, had you come out earlier, would that have saved your job?” Diaz responded, “You know, it’s a good question. I think it addresses a lot of the concerns of what people had. I mean, it doesn’t—you know, just because you’re a gay man doesn’t mean that you can’t be a misogynist…”

To prove libel, Diaz would have to prove that PubliCola made a false assertion of fact; that this falsehood caused Diaz demonstrable harm; and that we did so knowing that the factual claim was false and made it anyway with “reckless disregard” for the truth.” None of these claims apply to our post.

Moreover, Washington state has additional protections against “bullying by lawsuit.” In 2021, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee signed a law that “fast-tracks review of dubious lawsuits,” according to the Seattle Times, providing unique protections against SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) lawsuits, whose aim is to “intimidate people into silence.”

If you agree that public officials shouldn’t use their power and resources to try to silence journalists, please contribute to help us offset the legal fees we incurred defending against Diaz’ threats against us. (Additional options here). If you’d like to learn more about those threats, read on.

Diaz made two claims against PubliCola.

First, he claimed that we maliciously reported a “false rumor” when we mentioned the existence of a rumor reported in a series of KUOW stories, which Rantz and Diaz discussed in their interview. (We removed this reference, which we originally noted because Diaz and Rantz spent some time discussing it).

Second, Diaz said he never claimed that being gay is a defense against sexual harassment allegations by women, and that we said he did. According to Diaz’ attorneys, the former police chief actually made “the opposite point,” by noting that it’s possible for gay men to be “misogynist.”

“You also write that, during his interview with Jason Rantz, Adrian repeatedly ‘returned to the idea that gay men can’t sexually harass or assault women,'” Diaz’ attorneys wrote. (This is one of the phrases we edited, as described above.) “That’s also false. In fact, Adrian highlighted the opposite point during the interview, saying, ‘You know, just because you’re a gay man doesn’t mean you can’t be a misogynist.”

The women who have sued for specific acts of sexual harassment and gender, wage, and job discrimination by Diaz and the former head of SPD’s public affairs department, John O’Neil.

During the interview, both Diaz and Rantz suggested that for Diaz, coming out as gay would shift the narrative about the allegations against him. As PubliCola’s headline makes clear, Rantz set this up as the focus of their conversation, writing, “His innocence, overshadowed by these damning allegations of predatory behavior, remained hidden behind a secret he wasn’t ready to share.”

During the interview, Rantz said the ousted chief had come on to his show in order “to defend himself with a pretty important reality that could have ended at least some of the accusations.” In response, Diaz said, “You know, it’s absurd, and I haven’t had the opportunity to just be able to tell my story. It’s a story I’ve struggled with over the last four years. I’m a gay Latino man.”

In his letter, Diaz’ attorneys said, “his sexual orientation makes the allegations against him less plausible … it undeniably does.”

Diaz, through his attorneys, also claimed PubliCola “put words in Adrian’s mouth that he never said, all to falsely ascribe to him a viewpoint he expressly disavowed [misogyny] during the very interview you describe and link to in your post. Again, proving falsity and actual malice to a jury wouldn’t be difficult. Your post is all the evidence we’d need,” the attorneys wrote.

Ironically, Diaz’s threat to sue PubliCola put words in my mouth. As I noted above, PubliCola did not call Diaz a misogynist; the post was about the fact that Diaz went on Rantz’s show in the context of allegations of harassment and discrimination, not about his private views on women. Despite this, I think it’s important to point out that opinions are categorically protected speech—something you can see in action by simply opening X, or reading the editorial page of any newspaper.

Speaking of  X, in the initial letter to PubliCola, Diaz blamed PubliCola for the opinions of strangers on social media and in the comments of the post; these posters were among hundreds, if not thousands, who responded to the Rantz interview by speculating in various online forums about decision to come out on Rantz’ show and the timing of the interview.

“Proving damages also wouldn’t be difficult given the harm your post has caused Adrian’s reputation,” Diaz’ attorneys wrote.

“The comment section on your post attests to that, with your most devoted readers mocking Adrian for going ‘with the Spacey defense lol,’ suggesting he’s lying about being gay, asking who he was sleeping with at the department, and unjustifiably ridiculing him for supposedly saying that gay men can’t sexually harass women. People on Facebook and X are republishing and amplifying your false allegations in the same ways. That’s not a coincidence; it’s the obvious and inevitable result of a post like yours.”

Courts have ruled that news outlets are not legally liable for things people say in their comments sections except in narrow circumstances, such as comments posted by the author of a story. According to the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press’ First Amendment Handbook, “news sites that let readers post comments will not be liable for those comments.”

As I noted above, we were eventually able to reach an agreement with Diaz and his DC attorneys, but it pressed our small budget, and we need your help offsetting the unanticipated expenses we incurred fighting this threat. (Additional options here).

Baseless libel threats don’t just threaten small publications like PubliCola—they serve as a warning to other journalists that they should watch what they say to avoid facing similar threats. As always, we appreciate your support for truly independent journalism in Seattle.