JK Rowling congratulates expelled Aussie Liberal MP who won huge $300,000 defamation case

Harry Potter author and outspoken gender critic JK Rowling has thrown her support behind expelled Liberal MP Moira Deeming following her huge victory over defamation.

Ms Deeming won her high-profile defamation case against Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto and was awarded $300,000 in damages in the Federal Court on Thursday.

Federal Court Judge David O’Callaghan ruled that Pesutto defamed Ms Deeming by suggesting or implying she was a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer last year when she threw her out of the Liberal Party after she attended a gender-critical meeting.

‘The judge ruled that I had been defamed in five separate publications and that each of these had also seriously damaged my reputation. All of Mr. Pesutto’s defenses failed,” Ms. Deeming wrote on X.

“This verdict is a public acknowledgment that there has never been any justification – legal, moral or political – for what the opposition leader did to me and my family.”

Ms Rowling reshared Ms Deeming’s post to her 14.2 million followers, writing: ‘The “good side of history” has suffered an awful lot of loss lately, hasn’t it? Congratulations @MoiraDeemingMP’.

Ms Rowling is an outspoken critic of certain aspects of transgender activism, which she sees as potentially harmful to women’s rights and safety.

Ms Deeming claimed Pesutto defamed her after a Let Women Speak rally in Melbourne in March 2023, which was disrupted by a group of neo-Nazi protesters on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament, a claim he denied.

However, Judge O’Callaghan found that Mr Pesutto had defamed Ms Deeming in a press release, two radio interviews, a press conference and in an expulsion motion from the party.

The judge ruled that Pesutto suggested Ms Deeming was unfit to be a member of the parliamentary Liberal Party because of her links to the Nazis.

Mr Pesutto was not in court to hear the decision, while Ms Deeming was supported by her husband and a group of women.

The group cheered after the judge left the bench as Ms Deeming’s husband gave her a hug.

According to the Herald Sun, the total bill for Pesutto could be as much as $2 million.

In his ruling, Judge O’Callaghan struck down Mr Pesutto’s defenses of public interest, fair opinion and common law qualified privilege.

He also said the defense of contextual truth was irrelevant.

Outside the court, Ms Deeming made a brief statement to the waiting media.

“Obviously I am very pleased with today’s outcome and I am very grateful to the court for their prompt consideration,” she said.

“I just want to say, think of everyone who has stood by me and we’re just going to go out and get sex-based rights for women and child protection for children.”

Judge O’Callaghan had some harsh words about Mr Pesutto’s testimony at the trial, noting that his cross-examination lasted four days.

“Its length was in significant part due to his inability or refusal to provide a simple answer to simple enough questions,” Judge O’Callaghan wrote in his ruling.

The judge said he understood that when politicians “engage in the cutting edge of politics” and are confronted with tough questions at press conferences, “their job may be to deflect questions, focus on another subject or to run out the clock’.

However, Judge O’Callaghan said such evasions were ‘not the role of a witness in a legal proceeding’.

“Time and time again, Mr. Pesutto gave long and unresponsive answers,” he wrote.

During the three-and-a-half week trial in September, Ms Deeming, who is now an independent MP, told the court that the men dressed in black who were escorted by police to the women’s meeting site had nothing to do with her protest. .

Pesutto was also sued by British women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen and fellow Let Women Speak rally organizer Angie Jones, but settled the cases out of court in May.

As part of that settlement, he was forced to issue a groveling apology.