Nancy Guthrie: Who Strangers Decided Was The Man At Her Door

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
Let's go to another area of this conversation. Leave the kidnapping behind for now. A whole different set of legal trouble. The kind aimed at the family and the people accusing them. Nancy's relatives were cleared. That still has not stopped Strangers Online from deciding her son-in-law's bandmate, but the grade school teacher was the masked man at the door and showing up at his house over it. The sheriff himself told the guy to get a lawyer and sue for libel. So this part is about who actually has a case. Why nobody's filed one yet and whether the online mob is about to learn that citizen journalism has a limit that the law actually cares about. Eric Faddis, defense attorney, is with myself and Robin Dreeke, retired FBI special agent, to help us break all this down. Let's go to there. The grade school teacher plays in a band. Whoo, evil rock and roll. That clearly rock and roll music.

**Eric Faddis** (1:03)
The stuff of Satan.

**Tony Brueski** (1:05)
Of course it is. A grade school teacher who plays in a band with Nancy's son-in-law gets tagged online as the masked man at the door.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:15)
Devil music.

**Tony Brueski** (1:16)
He was home with his kids. He got cleared. The sheriff flat out told him to sue. Does this guy have the cleanest defamation case in the whole thing, Eric?

**Eric Faddis** (1:26)
Oh, gosh. You'd certainly want him to, and you'd hope that that was the case. But when the alleged defamer is a government official, it's so much harder. It's so much harder to bring a claim against those folks.
Certainly, this has all the makings of a defamation case. But for the actor being a government official, which, as we might talk about, goes into immunity and sovereign immunity, qualified immunity, there's all sorts of protections for when the government gets it wrong, and those protections would be at issue.

**Tony Brueski** (2:02)
When you're saying government official, are you referring to the source of the reporter who went down this road?

**Eric Faddis** (2:11)
I'm sorry, let me clarify. So bringing defamation claim against the police officer or something would be incredibly hard. Bring it against somebody who is not a government official, like a social media journalist or whatever, citizen journalist.
That would actually be a super strong case. You got to hope that there are assets, there's a collectability issue, you got to make sure it's worth your while to go through it. But that claim would be tremendously strong, I think.

**Tony Brueski** (2:40)
What about, let's go down this road for a second, of the source that initially this whole ball of wrong came out of, where it was reported, Ashley Banfield reported it, I'm not throwing shade on Ashley, I'm just saying what happened here, reported that, you know, allegedly there was a source that named Tommaso as the prime suspect. That was, then that, everybody started running with that. We don't know who that source was. Very shortly after, Nanus came and said, no, that's not the case at all. It's not that, in no way, shape or form, I'm insinuating that that is the case at all. This is just how this is played out. Is there any or are there any legal repercussions for a source that gives a reporter that information? I mean, Ashley's not a citizen reporter.
I mean, obviously, she doesn't have to give up her source by any stretch of the imagination. That would be another big hurdle that would happen here. But if, let's just play it out, she gets sued.
Does she have any sort of defense? Does she have anything where she can look at that source and go, here's what they told me. I'm the reporter, I'm the messenger, and I'm relaying information. But the source was not delivering it at an official capacity. So as the reporter, you're kind of putting your credibility on the line if you're going to go forward with that information or not. It's a gray area, some may argue, some may say it's very black and white. What say you?

**Eric Faddis** (4:14)
Yeah, you know, I think the reporters have to, in those contexts, have to choose their words extremely carefully. If the reporter were to say that this is all according to a source, and I haven't, you know, personal, I don't have 100% confirmation of the veracity of this source's account. But this is what the source is saying. This is a matter of public import. I think the public should know about it, so I'm telling you. I'm relaying that info. Then she's probably protected. Whereas if she said, you know, a source gave us this information, and what I'm reporting to you today is that this Tommaso person is the suspect. That is where you've crossed the line.