Dem Rep Accuses GOP Witness, Mocks Him for Not Responding – He Just Filed $10M Libel Suit

Meet Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California Democrat. If you don’t know her from the other 432 current representatives, there’s a good chance you will. She’s likely about to become the new face of the smug libel defendant.

You know the type. Yes, move over, CNN and Amber Heard. What Kamlager-Dove lacks in name recognition — now, anyhow — she’ll make up for in complete and total irresponsibility by getting herself dragged to court, assuming this goes to trial.

The inciting act, in case you missed it, came during a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. Appearing before the committee was Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist formerly of Rolling Stone and sundry other outlets. Once the darling of the left, Taibbi has been essentially excommunicated from the tribe for daring to report on censorship issues within the media establishment, particularly as it pertains to the Twitter Files.

If you know him for anything, it’s probably that, since he’s one of the few journalists Elon Musk trusted with the documents related to government-spurred censorship on the platform now known as X. The Racket News writer had a falling-out with Musk — somewhat predictable for anyone familiar with either personality, really — but has since been one of the most trusted voices, both in independent media and on the right wing, on the topic of censorship. So, naturally, the Democrats have a field day with demonization.

Most of this demonization, it must be said, does not fall under the aegis of libel. Given the leeway afforded to speech under First Amendment precedent, in fact, it takes a special sort of moron to get themselves dragged into court for libel under any circumstances, especially as an elected official in a congressional hearing. That’s because the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution protects what you say as an officeholder while speaking in Congress.

Kamlager-Dove is just that kind of moron, claiming — absent any evidence this happened — that, by calling Taibbi, Republicans on the committee were “elevating a serial sexual harrasser as their star witness,” and then inexplicably charging someone with uploading the transcript on her congressional website and on social media services.

In a $10 million libel action filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, Taibbi’s lawyers stated that “republications on X, BlueSky and Defendant’s website, made outside the scope of her legislative duties, are not protected by the Speech and Debate Clause and are thus actionable.” Whoops.

So, let’s go back to the events of Tuesday, where Kamlanger-Dove expressed regrets that the committee wasn’t having a hearing about any of those, but was instead “wasting taxpayer time and resources on … the so-called ‘censorship-industrial complex.’”

“The majority is relitigating a made-up conspiracy theory about a part of the State Department that no longer exists to distract from the dumpster fire foreign policy this administration is pursuing, and elevating a serial sexual harasser as their star witness in the process.”

Damn. Ranking Member Kamlager-Dove calls GOP witness Matt Taibbi a “serial sexual harasser” and enters articles into the congressional record about his history as a sex pest pic.twitter.com/D0li1K6Qij

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 1, 2025

Again, just a recap of what she’s talking about: The Global Engagement Center, a former State Department agency, was heavily involved in getting Twitter to censor gobs of stuff in the name of countering disinformation and similar such nonsense. It was “shut down,” in very emphatic air quotes, as the Biden administration was winding down; the emphatic air quotes refer to the fact that the GEC ended up distributing staffers throughout the federal leviathan in such a way that their activities could continue even with the hindrance of an unfriendly administration.

This probably isn’t what you care about, however, and that whole part — i.e., the “serial sexual harasser” business — was referred to in social media posts where she said, “After this, Republicans gave Matt Taibbi time to defend himself. It’s telling that he didn’t.”

After this, Republicans gave Matt Taibbi time to defend himself.

It’s telling that he didn’t. https://t.co/YNJe7ZRD3S

— Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (@RepKamlagerDove) April 1, 2025

First, as for the “serial sexual harasser” point: As National Review noted, it’s unclear precisely what she’s referring to, but one can easily guess by inference that it’s his either work with The eXile, a Russian-based expatriate-written satirical newspaper that was published in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Taibbi left the publication in 2002.

A book he co-authored with The eXile’s Mark Ames, “The eXile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia,” contained satirical passages written by Ames involving jokes regarding sexual harassment of two of their female employees. Back when this was dragged up by the right against then-liberal darling Taibbi, lefty outlet Paste managed to find the two women in question, who stated Taibbi hadn’t done it.

As for other events that might justify the term “serial,” Taibbi has a reported history of not suffering idiots gladly or otherwise. (He reportedly threw coffee on a Vanity Fair reporter when he brought up the eXile, although other journalists questioned, not unreasonably, why the reporter wasn’t burned or didn’t even bother putting that fact in the headline, where it belonged, or even mentioning it until pretty far down in the story). That’s not precisely “sexual harasser” territory, however, unless you have an unnatural attraction to coffee

He’s been accused of sexism before over other things, here and there, over the course of his career, but nothing unusual or particularly cutting. For instance, par for that course is when feminist and novelist Erica Jong took exception to his description of Hillary Clinton’s arms as “flabby” on the 2008 campaign trail, ascribing his “sexism”  — somehow — to a repressed Oedipal fantasy regarding his mother. (This makes no more sense when read, I assure you.)

Taibbi’s restrained counter-piece (headline: “Erica Jong Thinks I Want to Do My Mother: A Response”), published by HuffPost, noted that he’s actually worse to male politicians, with frequent citations therein. (On then-Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, for example: “[An] utter tool…a poll-chasing stuffed suit with a Max Headroom hairdo who will say (or won’t say, for that matter) whatever the f*** it takes to get elected … When it comes to the satanic art of presidential campaigning, this lean, heavily moussed political athlete is a stone prodigy, a natural who glides through campaign events with the aid of some dark supernatural power — a tie-clad, sweat-resistant cross of Roy Hobbs and Rosemary’s Baby.” That’s one of the nicer ones.)

So, yeah: This is pretty much an evidence-free accusation of a serious ethical violation nobody can prove because it doesn’t seem to exist. Which, on the second point about defending himself, is why Taibbi seems pretty set on going into court on this one.

“There is not much a person like me can say to a member of Congress hiding behind the protections of the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution,” Taibbi said via a post on Racket News.

“One can however respond to a member arrogant enough to repeat those claims on social media. I’ve now done so, in the form of a $10 million libel lawsuit filed today in a New Jersey federal court,” he said, linking to the filing. “Rep. Kamlager-Dove, no woman has ever accused me of engaging in sexual harrassment once, let alone serially. See you in court. Please do not evade service.”

The court document goes on to note that Kamlager-Dove entered several articles about The eXile into the congressional record and noted that he’d previously reached settlements with other publications that stated eXile-related articles weren’t satirical.

The suit goes on to say that the representative “either knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for their truth, as evidenced by her reliance on unverified, decades-old satirical content that had been widely discredited by prior legal action and public corrections — corrections of which she, as a public official with access to such information, was undoubtedly aware.”

While Kamlager-Dove may be wanting in the fame department — at least compared to Amber Heard, CNN or Fox News — she’s potentially about to become the face of a certain type of elected official: one who not only recklessly disregards the truth under the assumption there is a vast censorship-industrial complex at work to protect her, but who also doesn’t understand the generally consistent 1:1 correlation between (to bowdlerize the expression) messing around and finding out once those untruths become actionable.

Whether or not that correlation is so direct depends, of course, on whether the representative decides it’s best to find a way to settle this one quietly, or whether she decides it’s worth fighting and trying to say that her social media statements either were an extension of her Speech and Debate protections or contained no actionable material. One thing’s for sure, though: Time will tell.

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