David Vigilante, CNN’s executive vice president and general counsel, issued a pointed response Wednesday to the demand by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign that the network retract and apologize for a recent poll that showed him behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The demand, which contained numerous incorrect and misleading claims, was immediately rejected by the network, which stands by its poll.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40-year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN’s polling results,” Vigilante wrote in his response. “To the extent we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media.”
Read the full letter below:
