Roy Moore Sues Sacha Baron Cohen For Making Him Look Stupid, Sleazy.

Has America's top lawyer, Larry Klayman, so he's sure to win!

Disgraced old Bible-humping has-been Roy Moore is suing comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, Showtime, and Showtime's parent company CBS for $95 million because Cohen pretended to be an Israeli TV host and tricked Moore into thinking he would receive a Major Award for being a friend of Israel. In fact, Cohen played a very mean prank on Moore and called him a pedophile, which apparently is worth $95 million if you're an idiot. The complaint in the case became available yesterday, and we fear Moore may have to sue himself for defamation too, because boy, it really makes him look foolish.

Moore's lawyer is the always brilliant Larry Klayman, veteran of such legal slam dunks as "That Lady Judge Is A Jew!" "Deporting Barack Obama because he's a foreign," "Suing Hillary Clinton over Benghazi,"and"Suing Obama, Holder and all the Blacks for starting a race war." Of course, they were all slam dunks against Klayman and his clients, but that's never kept him from appearing as a legal expert on Fox News. This time out, he's going to finally get justice for Roy Moore by claiming that being pranked constitutes fraud and defamation and all sorts of bad things.

Here's the segment from Cohen's "Who Is America" that Moore is suing over:

Cohen, pretending to be an Israeli security expert, shows Moore an electronic "pedophile detector" wand he says was developed by the Israeli army, and says, well of course it won't do anything when I wave it over someone who isn't a sex offender, like me (no result) or you (BEEP BEEP BEEP!) That's the entire premise. Moore, outraged, stalked off the set after telling Cohen he's absolutely not a pedophile, and "maybe Israeli technology hasn't developed properly."

You know, just like the youngest of the teenaged girls he liked to date in his 20s. Allegedly. 

The complaint is a pretty good piece of comedy in its own right. You see, comedy is deceptive, and deceptions are WRONG, which is why you should never, ever lie, and boy, we kind of hope this all ends up with Roy Moore having to say under oath that he never dated or tried to assault teenaged girls, don't you? So anyway, here is Larry Klayman explaining why comedy show pranks are actually FRAUD:

Defendant Cohen and his agents including the Defendants Showtime and CBS set up scenarios where Defendant Cohen, while in character, falsely and fraudulently induces unsuspecting victims, such as Judge Moore to be interviewed under dishonest, unethical, illegal and false pretenses, for his works. Defendant Cohen and his agents then set these unsuspecting victims up for ridicule and to severely humiliate them on film to promote his works and to generate large financial returns for himself [...]

In order to fraudulently induce Judge Moore and Mrs. Moore to travel to Washington, D.C., where filming was to and did take place, and where the majority of acts pled herein occurred, on or about February 14, 2018, Defendant Cohen and his agents falsely and fraudulently represented to Plaintiff that Yerushalayim TV – which does not actually exist - was the producer and broadcaster of the show that Judge Moore would appear on, instead of the actual network that the show that later appeared on Showtime.

Clearly, to win a case like this, you have to say "false, fraudulent, and illegal" a whole lot, and then it's a simple matter of the defendants writing a check for damages, duh. Or at least settling, which is obviously a lot easier and still quite remunerative. We have to say, we are rather taken with Klayman's creative transformation of comedy into legalish language:

If he'd known it was fake, he wouldn't have participated, so please pay him $95 million now, OK?

Klayman says Moore advised the defendants that since he'd signed the release form under false pretenses, the segment shouldn't have aired -- although the details of that form aren't included, so we'll guess Showtime's lawyers weren't especially impressed by that claim. NBC News notes that a 2008 lawsuit over Cohen's film Borat was tossed out because the plaintiffs had signed a release, so that document could end up being central to any further action.

Here's the real meat of the complaint:

We wish -- in vain, almost certainly -- this stupid thing goes to trial and Showtime/CBS attorneys get to ask whether Moore's lawyers think any viewers would believe it was a working device.

Now, as we always remind you, Yr Dok Zoom is Not a Lawyer, but this entire lawsuit just looks incredibly silly and destined to fail. Moore is one of those public figures, for whom defamation complaints have to meet a very, very high bar to go anywhere, and given the multiple credible allegations against him, it seems doubtful any joke about Moore's alleged past conduct is actionable, even if trickery was involved in getting him into a studio. One of the key points in such a claim is that the plaintiff has to prove the defendant knows the claim is false -- and in this case, that would mean knowing Roy Moore never did anything his accusers say, not just showing they knew their device and the whole setup for the "interview" was a hoax.

But sure, Larry Klayman ought to be able to prove that, huh? Then he can start going after every comedian who ever joked about Roy Moore, ever.

[ NBC News / Moore v. Cohen complaint]

Help Wonkette in its inevitable defense from Larry Klayman. He sues a lot!