Lindsay Clancy's Mistrial Put Tim Cruz Under WHAT Pressure?!

Tony Brueski (0:02)

This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Green.

There are consequences to actions. For weeks on this podcast, we've been sounding the alarm on the vile, baseless conspiracies targeting Patrick Clancy. We've been saying it was time for him to take the gloves off and go after these toxic online sleuths legally. Now he's doing exactly that through his attorney. Patrick has issued a stern warning. The defamation campaign stops now or lawsuits are coming. But what does hunting down internet trolls look like in actual practice? Joining us to continue the very conversation we started just a few weeks ago on this very topic, defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis, along with Robin Drake, retired FBI Special Agent and Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. Eric, let's start, practically speaking.

How difficult is it for a legal team to track down and unmask TikTok users, Reddit slews, people just posting their videos? I mean, I get when you have brands and bigger names that may be doing this, but a lot of it doesn't even necessarily come from bigger names. Some does, but the tendrils are the thousands of people that just keep spreading it. It's whack-a-mole from hell. I mean, how do you go about trying to patrol something like this or bring consequences to those who just refuse to stop spreading baseless lies about a man who lost his three children?

Eric Faddis (1:48)

There are a lot of complicating factors to that.

One is that you really need a solid investigator and probably an investigation team, and not one that is limited to your home state, but one that has reached throughout the country, and I guess conceivably internationally. Because these folks, they could be anywhere. Then on top of that, how do you learn who they are? Some of these folks do this anonymously.

Sometimes they are working through encrypted channels and things like that. So getting past those barriers is tough too. And then on top of that, how do you identify that they are the ones who were actually posting? Let's say it's an ex-account or something like that, where it's a textual post. How do you identify that they are the person behind that doing that work? You could do production records requests. You could do certain legal mechanisms to try to learn that. But it is a tremendous undertaking with so many moving parts.

Robin Drake (2:43)

Is there a way, Eric, I'm going to research it in a second, as we're talking about this, it just keeps coming to my mind, like you're saying, how challenging and difficult this is.

Our laws, I don't think have kept up nearly as fast on defamation or even cease and desist or restraining orders. I mean, is there any of these legal mechanizations that you think would fit better or on top of? But again, if you can't identify these individuals, how do you do that? So I guess a multiple question packet here is, should we be updating the laws? How would we update them? And would any of these other mechanisms work better or in congruence with a defamation suit? Everything, go.

Eric Faddis (3:28)

Yeah.

I agree that the defamation laws are kind of behind the times on stuff like this. Back in the day, you might have a person in a news article who was quoted making a factual statement that was defamatory, and then you can go to the reporter and be like, hey, it was John who said that, wasn't it? And then you go to John and you can bring a claim for defamation against that person. Here, there's anonymity issues, there are platform issues.

And so the logistics of trying to bring a successful claim against these folks, let alone whether it would even be collectible if they have assets, that kind of thing. And in what state do you bring it? There are venue and jurisdiction issues when we're talking about digital communications and where those would fall on.

Tony Brueski (4:19)

Let's try and define the line here between theory, which exists in many cases, and defamation.

A lot of creators protect themselves by throwing in phrases like, in my opinion, and it's just a theory. I mean, legally, where is the line drawn where a true crime, you know, hot take, crosses over into financially, you know, ruinous defamation with what's being said online?

Eric Faddis (4:53)

It is a bit blurry, I'd say, you know, and for defamation, that only applies to statements of fact, not opinions. Well, what's the difference between those two? If I say, you know, in my opinion, Reddington is a bad person or something, or opinion, he's a horrible dresser.