Rachel Ehrenfeld

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Rachel Ehrenfeld is an American conservative expert [1] on terrorism and corruption-related topics. These include terror financing, economic warfare, and narcoterrorism. She has lectured on these issues in many countries, and has advised banking communities, law enforcement agencies, and governments.

Contents

Ehrenfeld serves as director of conservative think tanks; the American Center for Democracy [2] and its Economic Warfare Institute.

Career

Ehrenfeld was a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Institute of War and Peace Studies, a research scholar at New York University School of Law, and a fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Her Ph.D., in criminology, is from the Hebrew University School of Law.

Ehrenfeld's articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , Newsweek , The Guardian , The Washington Times , National Review , Huffington Post , The Eurobserver , The Jerusalem Post , the New York Sun , and the Los Angeles Times . She has appeared as a commentator on television and radio news programs, including The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, and MSNBC. She is also a contributor to the Terror Finance Blog. [3]

Ehrenfeld has testified before the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament, the French Parliament and the Parliament of Canada on terror financing. She has also provided evidence to the British Parliament alleging corruption of the Palestinian Authority and has testified before the U.S. Congress on terrorism-related issues.

In 2009 she wrote an article advocating the use of mycoherbicides in Afghanistan to suppress opium farming, describing them as "specialized bioherbicide agents designed to inoculate the soil against the growth of certain plants". [4]

In 2010 she wrote an article endorsing profiling at airports. [5]

Rachel's Law and Free Speech Legislation

Ehrenfeld became involved in an international legal controversy when she was sued for libel in the United Kingdom.

In her book, "Funding Evil", Ehrenfeld alleged that Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz had financed al-Qaeda through his bank and the charitable organization. Mahfouz denied the allegations. Ehrenfeld, a U.S. citizen based in New York, had not written or marketed her book internationally and refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the British court over her case. Her refusal resulted in the British Court awarding a default judgment against her.

Represented by her attorney, Daniel Kornstein, [6] Ehrenfeld pre-emptively countersued Mahfouz in New York to obtain a declaration that the judgment would not be enforced in the United States and that her book was not defamatory under United States defamation law. When the New York courts ruled that they lacked personal jurisdiction over Mahfouz, the New York State legislature took immediate action and unanimously passed the Libel Terrorism Protection Act [7] (also known as "Rachel's Law"). Rachel's Law was signed into law on April 29, 2008. The law "offers New Yorkers greater protection against libel judgments in countries whose laws are inconsistent with the freedom of speech granted by the United States Constitution." [8]

As of July 2010, six other states have passed analogs to Rachel's Law: Illinois, [9] Florida, [10] California, [11] Tennessee, [12] Maryland, [13] and Utah. [14] A federal bill based on Rachel's Law was passed unanimously out of the Judiciary Committee and has since then been approved by both Houses of Congress. President Obama signed the bill into law on 10 August 2010. The bill, S. 3518, titled Securing and Protecting our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act (Speech Act), [15] includes several measures aimed at closing loopholes in First Amendment protections for free speech. The act bars enforcement of foreign libel judgments that conflict with the American constitutional due process and the First Amendment. The burden of proof is also placed on the party suing for enforcement. The party suing to prevent enforcement may also sue the libel plaintiff for a declaration that the foreign libel judgment is "repugnant" to American constitutional law, and is entitled to attorney's fees for resultant legal proceedings.

The new federal law, and the existing seven state laws that predate it, can not protect American persons who exercise First Amendment rights but who then travel abroad and then become subject to the physical application of foreign libel laws and judgments. Some countries, for example, Thailand, have laws that cite jurisdiction over speech exercised outside their countries and which mandate punishment for libel inside the foreign plaintiff's country even though the speech may have occurred outside. Extraterritorial jurisdiction over First Amendment rights has not been the focus of attention in international legal jurisprudence or focus in the diplomatic community.

Ehrenfeld's efforts at libel law reform in the United States inspired the Libel Reform Campaign [16] an NGO campaign with over 55,000 supporters.

Books

Related Research Articles

Defamation, at a first approximation, is any form of communication that can injure a third party's reputation. This can include all modes of human-understandable communications: gestures, images, signs, words. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputation – like dignity and honour. For a communication to be considered defamatory, it must be conveyed to someone other than the defamed. Depending on the permanence or transience of the communication medium, defamation may be distinguished between libel and slander. It is treated as a civil wrong, as a criminal offence, or both. The exact definition of defamation and related acts, as well as the ways they are dealt with, can vary greatly between countries and jurisdictions; for example, whether they constitute crimes or not, to what extent insults and opinions are included in addition to allegations of facts, to what extent proving the alleged facts is a valid defence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patriot Act</span> 2001 United States anti-terrorism law

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New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's freedom of speech protections limit the ability of American public officials to sue for defamation. The decision held that if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or candidate for public office, not only must they prove the normal elements of defamation—publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party—they must also prove that the statement was made with "actual malice", meaning the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it might be false. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is frequently ranked as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the modern era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act</span> United States law

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) is a United States law, codified at Title 28, §§ 1330, 1332, 1391(f), 1441(d), and 1602–1611 of the United States Code, that established criteria as to whether a foreign sovereign nation is immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts—federal or state. The Act also establishes specific procedures for service of process, attachment of property and execution of judgment in proceedings against a foreign state. The FSIA provides the exclusive basis and means to bring a civil suit against a foreign sovereign in the United States. It was signed into law by United States President Gerald Ford on October 21, 1976.

In law, the enforcement of foreign judgments is the recognition and enforcement in one jurisdiction of judgments rendered in another ("foreign") jurisdiction. Foreign judgments may be recognized based on bilateral or multilateral treaties or understandings, or unilaterally without an express international agreement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act</span> United States federal law

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) of 2006 is a United States federal law that prohibits any person from engaging in certain conduct "for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise." The statute covers any act that either "damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property" or "places a person in reasonable fear" of injury.

Libel tourism is a term, first coined by Geoffrey Robertson, to describe forum shopping for libel suits. It particularly refers to the practice of pursuing a case in England and Wales, in preference to other jurisdictions, such as the United States, which provide more extensive defenses for those accused of making derogatory statements.

<i>Alms for Jihad</i>

Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World is a 2006 book co-written by American authors J. Millard Burr, a former USAID relief coordinator in Sudan, and historian Robert O. Collins which discusses the role of Islamic charities in financing terrorism.

Khalid bin Mahfouz was a Saudi Arabian billionaire, banker, businessman, investor and former chairman of the National Commercial Bank (NCB). Khalid is the son of Salem Bin Mahfouz, a Saudi entrepreneur who rose from being a small-time moneychanger to becoming the founder of the NCB, the first private Saudi bank.

<i>Funding Evil</i> 2003 book by Rachel Ehrenfeld

Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It is a book written by counterterrorism researcher Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy and the Economic Warfare Institute. It was published by Bonus Books of Los Angeles, California in August 2003.

Sir David Eady, KC is a retired High Court judge in England and Wales. As a judge, he is known for having presided over many high-profile libel and privacy cases.

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Modern libel and slander laws in many countries are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the Statute of Gloucester in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). The law of libel emerged during the reign of James I (1603–1625) under Attorney General Edward Coke who started a series of libel prosecutions. Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of duelling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.

The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbade libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be obviously facetious. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">SPEECH Act</span> 2010 U.S. law limiting foreign defamation cases

The Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (SPEECH) Act is a 2010 federal statutory law in the United States that makes foreign libel judgments unenforceable in U.S. courts, unless either the foreign legislation applied offers at least as much protection as the U.S. First Amendment, or the defendant would have been found liable even if the case had been heard under U.S. law.

<i>The Libel Tourist</i> 2007 American film

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Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concerning online defamation. Plaintiffs Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick sued Crystal Cox for maintaining several blogs that accused Obsidian and Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. The court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, but found one single post to be more factual in its assertions and therefore defamatory. For that post, the court awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. This case is notable for the court's ruling that Cox, as an internet blogger, was not a journalist and was thus not protected by Oregon's media shield laws, although the court later clarified that its ruling did not categorically exclude blogs from being considered media and indicated that its decision was based in part upon Cox offering to remove negative posts for a $2,500 fee. In January 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court's judgment awarding compensatory damages to the bankruptcy trustee. It also ordered a new trial on the blog post at issue.

Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75 billion in cash.

References

  1. ↑ Ehrenfeld, Rachel (9 July 2023). "SaveTheWest". SaveTheWest. Kenneth Abramowitz. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
  2. ↑ econwarfare.org
  3. ↑ "terrorfinance.org". terrorfinance.org. Retrieved 2013-07-07.
  4. ↑ "Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld: Defund the Taliban". Huffingtonpost.com. 2010-05-06. Retrieved 2013-07-07.
  5. ↑ "Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld: If We Want to Protect America's Airports, We Must Profile". Huffingtonpost.com. 2010-03-08. Retrieved 2013-07-07.
  6. ↑ "Kornstein Veisz Wexler & Pollard, LLP". Kvwp.net. Retrieved 2013-07-07.
  7. ↑ Archived September 18, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ "Governor Paterson Signs Legislation Protecting New Yorkers Against Infringement Of First Amendment Rights By Foreign Libel Judgments". Ny.gov. Archived from the original on 2009-02-20. Retrieved 2013-07-07.
  9. ↑ "Illinois General Assembly - Full Text of Public Act 095-0865". Ilga.gov. 2008-08-19. Retrieved 2013-07-07.
  10. ↑ http://laws.flrules.org/files/Ch_2009-232.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  11. ↑ http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/sen/sb_0301-0350/sb_320_bill_20091011_chaptered.pdf%5B%5D
  12. ↑ http://state.tn.us/sos/acts/106/pub/pc0900.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  13. ↑ "BILL INFO-2010 Regular Session-HB 193". mlis.state.md.us.
  14. ↑ Archived June 30, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  15. ↑ "Bill Text - 111th Congress (2009-2010) - THOMAS (Library of Congress)". Thomas.loc.gov. 2010-06-22. Archived from the original on 2016-01-13. Retrieved 2013-07-07.
  16. ↑ "libelreform.org". libelreform.org. Retrieved 2013-07-07.
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