Supreme Court declines to resuscitate Georgia Republican’s racketeering suit against Fox News

The Supreme Court will not revive a Georgia Republican’s far-fetched lawsuit against Fox News accusing the conservative news company of racketeering and conspiring to elect his opponent in a 2022 bid for Congress.

Wayne Johnson, now the Republican candidate for Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District, finished third in a 2022 primary election for the same House seat. After the election, Johnson sued Fox, one of its hosts and the candidate who finished first, Jeremy Hunt.

Johnson purported that Fox gave Hunt a disproportionate amount of airtime resulting in boosted votes and donations, alleging that the out-of-state donations from Fox viewers, sent by mail or processed online, constituted mail and wire fraud.

“All of these impacts on donations and voting were reasonably foreseeable and indeed were the intended outcome of the participants in the racketeering scheme,” Johnson wrote in his petition to the Supreme Court.

A federal judge tossed the case last year, writing in an order that Johnson’s allegations were “preposterous” and his attempt to convert a “grievance about unequal airtime” on Fox into racketeering “unpersuasive.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed that decision.

Johnson asked the Supreme Court to rule that the appeals court erred by affirming his lawsuit’s dismissal on the basis he failed to prove mail fraud and wire fraud underpinned the alleged racketeering scheme. The justices declined to hear the case.

In November, Johnson will face off against Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), who has represented Georgia’s 2nd District since 1993. Johnson beat convicted Jan. 6 rioter Chuck Hand in the state’s Republican primary earlier this year.

He previously served during the Trump administration as the chief strategy and transformation officer and chief operating office for the Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid.

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