The Daily Signal - PA Moms for Liberty Leader Will Sue to Restore Her Good Name After False Harassment Charges

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

A Pennsylvania Moms for Liberty leader will file defamation lawsuits to restore her good name after she was falsely accused of harassment in what she calls an orchestrated smear campaign. Nicole Marie Prussman, chairwoman of the Monroe County, Pennsylvania, chapter of the parental rights group, received a citation for harassment in April, after news reports of the charge came out in March. Although a magistrate court judge initially found Prussman guilty without a proper fair trial, the case was dismissed on appeal when the state ruled that Prussman's accuser failed to corroborate her alleged evidence. Yet the news outlets that reported the charges against Prussman have not reported her acquittal. Now, the Coalition for Liberty, a nonprofit dedicated to combating cancel culture, will represent her in court as she goes on the offensive. The Coalition for Liberty has not clarified which individuals or entities it plans to sue on Prussman's behalf, but it has vowed to bring litigation against anyone who broke the law in defaming her. Prussman became the target of "a very organized hit job by a group called Stop Moms for Liberty," Doug Turpin, president and board chair of Coalition for Liberty, told "The Daily Signal Podcast." "They planned this. You can even see online how they were getting their members to plot to file harassment charges against Moms for Liberty all across the country. This was a deliberate attempt to cancel Nicole [Prussman] simply because she was speaking out on behalf of children because of inappropriate and highly sexual content." Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She was part of a very organized hit job by a group called Stop Moms for Liberty. They planned this. You can even see online how they were getting their members to plot to file harassment charges against moms for liberty all across the country. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, December 18th. I'm Tyler O'Neill. And that was Doug Turpin, president and board chair of, Coalition for Liberty, an organization that is representing a woman by the name of Nicole Marie Prussman. She is the chairwoman of the Monroe County, Pennsylvania chapter of Moms for Liberty.

And Prussman was falsely accused of harassment. It's actually a very, very fascinating case where this group called Stop Moms for Liberty allegedly orchestrated false harassment claims against Prostman. And it was a low-level offense, and she was cited, and then she was found guilty on a low-level magistrate court. And then when she appealed it, it became clear that there was no evidence against her that was reliable. And she was acquitted of the charges then. But it's interesting because many of the news outlets that ran with stories saying that she had been arrested, when she hadn't been arrested. The real truth is it was just a document, a charging document, said arrestee. And many news outlets ran with the story that she was arrested and ran with the story that she was convicted.

And then when she got acquitted, there's been crickets. And so she is working with the Coalition for Liberty to restore her good name after it was dragged through the mud. So here's my conversation with her. She shares the whole story. And let's Listen to that right after this. Hi, this is Rob Lewy, executive editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of this podcast. Each day we strive to bring you news you can trust. We see it as our mission to cut through the liberal media spin and provide honest, thorough, and responsible reporting on the most important issues of the day. But we can't do it without your help.

As we approach the end of the year, the Daily Signal is counting on donations from listeners like you. We are the nonprofit news outlet of the Heritage Foundation and rely on generous gifts from our supporters. Please help us by making a tax-deductible year-end gift. You can do so by visiting DailySignal.com slash donate. Your gift will ensure that we continue producing cutting-edge journalism and investigative reporting. Again, that website isdailysignal.com slash donate. Thanks for listening. We are grateful for your support. This is Tyler O'Neill, a managing editor at the Daily Signal, and I'm honored to be joined by Nicole Marie Pressman, who is chairwoman of the Monroe County, Pennsylvania chapter of Moms for Liberty, and Doug Turpin, who is the president and board chair

at Coalition for Liberty. It's such a pleasure to have you guys with us. Great to meet. Thank you. Thank you. So, Nicole, I want to just jump right in. You kind of became notorious among many of these liberal outlets for, you know, supposedly harassing someone. There were even some weird news reports claiming that you had hacked a dead woman's Facebook account and used it to harass another woman who was alive. All of this seems bizarre from what I've seen in court documents. There's no suggestion that you had ever hacked someone else's Facebook account. And the only evidence that you had ever done anything harassing were screenshots from. your Facebook account, what claimed to be your Facebook account, that could not be corroborated

in court. And so eventually the case was actually, you know, dismissed after essentially a kangaroo court judge found you guilty at a lower level and you appealed. Can you walk me through the story like how this started these accusations and how they kind of snowballed and then eventually how you got vindicated? Yeah, it's been a real wild ride. This started way back last February when my chapter started to share information about inappropriate texts that was being read in classes and poor performance rates that are sadly across our county. We were looking to inform parents and educate them so that we

can begin solving problems. And we began getting a lot of pushback to the point where we had to change locations and adjust our meeting location and all of that. This escalated to the point where I received a phone call on a Friday night about how I was feeling. And I was a little confused because I thought it had to do with the school board meeting earlier that week. And it turns out they wanted to know how I was reacting to the article, which is when I found out anything was even going on. When this article was published about me, it said I was arrested and I had been charged. And the first I was hearing about it was that moment reading a link through a text message from a friend.

Worse, they did this on a Friday night. So I get the information, courts are closed, weekend down. we don't get any information until Monday. And in that point, the article that had originally been published had been not just republished excessively, but they actually had the goal to add molestation to the harassment accusation. And there were numerous articles published with that foul word attached to my teaching credentials. And this all happened in a what really seems like a moment. It was so fast.

And it was out of control and everywhere before I received the official documentation on April 18th a month later. Wow. Yeah. And so like that that documentation, essentially you had been cited for harassment at a low level court and you never were arrested, even though the document says arrestee on it. So they assumed when they got the document that you had been arrested even though you hadn't been. I have no idea what they assumed because no one ever contacted me.

No one reached out. No one left me a message to ask a question. So I'm not going to make any assumptions on what they did. What I know is that my charges are equivalent to a speeding ticket. And the worst penalty that could have occurred was a $400 fine. That being said, within a week, that article had spread not only out of my state, but across most of the country. And it took to social media, like fire to tissue. paper. She was part of a very organized hit job by a group called Stop Moms for Liberty. They planned this.

You can even see online how they were getting their members to plot to file harassment charges against Moms for Liberty all across the country. This was a deliberate attempt to cancel Nicole simply because she was speaking out on behalf of children because of inappropriate and highly sexual content. And to them, that's just beyond the pale. We've got to destroy the messenger. We don't want to have a civil and respectful debate about whether or not something is appropriate. We want to attack, destroy mentally, physically, financially, in every possible way, anyone who would dare to stand against our messages. And that's what they tried to do to Nicole. It was an organized hit job where she was never even contacted by anybody from law enforcement. It was beyond suspicious how over a month later she received something in the mail. But yet the news media received information about this

instantly and that you had all of these pylons on dozens of people organizing to attack her in a very concerted, highly organized hit job. So when I was researching your case, it was funny because Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, was telling me, like, I was going through this list, and your case came up because a lot of liberal outlets had repeated it over and over and over again. And I looked, and like the Pocono record covered your arrest. They covered your conviction in essentially a kangaroo court, a low court, that, you know, this judge didn't even, from what I understand, the judges on this low level have lower qualifications requirements. They don't even have to be an attorney.

Right. They're just a magistrate. It was just a local level magistrate who did not follow any of the law. or procedures did not even really allow her to have information presented her to offense. They never even required him to put the alleging information about the harassment that was supposedly done online, even being presented in court. They didn't have it. They didn't bring it.

My attorney asked for the evidence because we had not, there is no, this is such a low level of court, there's no discovery. So I was accused of doing something, but then not allowed to see what I did to defend myself, because there is no discovery. So when we went into court, the first thing asked was what? And the trooper regularly said that there were 200 pages of documentation, right? That's a lot. And when they were asked to present the evidence, they came to their hearing.

without it. It was not there to be presented. And when it was appealed and we did actually acquire the evidence, it was only 35 pages of some poorly doctored screenshots and printouts. And there was never any evidence of any, quote, dead woman's account. There was never any corroboration of any of this. She actually had a forensic, we hired a forensic IT person to look for any evidence of communication like this on her computer, and there was none. So, you know, we spent a lot of money to defend Nicole because what they were looking to do was destroy her reputation, destroy her job. They had people organizing, hitting them with automated bots on her website. And, and filling up the calendar for months and months on end,

just to deny her the ability to practice her business as a teacher trying to help parents as a counselor with the issues that the children were having. So they were wanting to just try to destroy Nicole in every possible way, and this was planned. So, you know, it's vitally important that these types of bullies, somebody stands up to them. And so that's what the Coalition for Liberty is. When Moms for Liberty called us and told us about this story,

and we looked at the evidence and we talked to Nicole, we thought, this is just horrendous. What they're doing is beyond the pale. This isn't civil and respectful date. This is trying to destroy somebody for trying to help children. So she was acquitted from this. All of the lies that they told about her online, people are going to be held accountable.

For the first time, the coalition for Liberty, we're going to go on offense. And every single one of these organizations, anybody who's responsible and participated in this, is going to be held accountable in a court of law. Yeah, so what do you mean by that exactly? That was my next question. You know, the Coalition for Liberty is representing Nicole,

and you're looking at, you know, going on offense after being on defense for so long. What does going on offense look like? Yeah. So cancel culture has been able to proliferate as the left's greatest weapon because there hasn't been any consequences. People are able to do this

to average ordinary Americans in plot like they did against Nicole to overwhelm them. And they don't have the means by themselves to be able to defend themselves or to do anything when somebody is lying and defaming them, slandering them, doing malicious prosecution, things are being said about them online or in newspapers that are complete lies,

they're not able by themselves to do anything about it. And because there's no consequences, the left has been using this to silence Americans, and it's having a devastating impact. So the Coalition for Liberty believes that if people are started to be held to account and you go after them in a court of law for every single thing that they've done within the law and as we are allowed to for defamation, slander, liable, malicious prosecution, anything that they can legally be held to account, then that will stop cancel culture. That will stop these baseless attacks on people like Nicole all across the country.

And we can return to a land where people are doing civil and responsible. respectful discussions of our differences, not trying to cancel and silence people. So you're planning on bringing defamation suits against those who falsely accused Nicole in this situation? For anything anybody's done that was in violation of the law, they will be held fully to account. So one of the weaknesses in defamation law, there's a very high hurdle because of New York Times v. Sullivan and more importantly, the precedence that followed New York Times v. Sullivan, if you are a public figure, as I'm sure they will argue that Nicole is, you know, you have to prove actual malice that they publish something with the reckless disregard for the truth. And you think that this probably, yeah. From what I've seen, this was beyond reckless and intentional there. So based on everything,

that we've seen and that the online posts, the plot beforehand, all of the things that they were said, this goes beyond a reckless disregard for the truth. And she was never arrested. She never used any dead woman's account. She never harassed anybody. They never even contacted her about these charges before they were a mailed to her. There are politicians that were involved in this thing. I think discovery and depositions will be quite illuminating. And our belief and our counsel's belief is that there is more than enough information here to substantiate serious legal claims and that these people have a real problem. Well, and I want to get to the issues, you know, Nicole, you mentioned two basic things that

you were focused on with Moms for Liberty in your area, the poor performance of students in public schools, and then also these sexualized materials. Can you talk a little bit more about how shocking it is these materials are in the library where you found them, what they show? You know, naturally, this is a, this is a PG show, but we can hint at, you know, what's there. The primary concern here is that when you bring a text into a classroom, it serves an academic purpose. I'm a licensed ELA teacher. We have skills and skill sets that our children need to succeed with at the end of our time together. So when you bring these texts in, you need to make sure that they fulfill these requirements.

Unfortunately, now what we're seeing is an influx of texts that have a social level to them. And they're bringing these in for the wow factor or the social sections of these. And in this particular tax, there was a graphic sexual assault from an older person and on a younger person. And it is multiple pages. So detailed. And the issue here is not that there's an issue directly with the book. I don't believe in banning texts. The thing about this country that's great is that we can read and learn anything.

The problem here is you are presenting this level of tax in a developmentally delicate age. And when you are presenting high-level sexually graphic literature to children who are developing in puberty as eighth graders, you need to question at the academic level, are we causing trauma within the classroom with the content we bring in? And that is what I was challenging. And like Doug said, the important thing to understand is

they came at me because I chose to challenge a curriculum. I don't even have kids in the specific district at the time we were working at. this is creating that level of culture where our parents don't feel comfortable bringing their concerns to a school district because how would they deal with this situation? Nicole was requested by parents to assist them. That's part of what she does. Just try to help out to resolve these kinds of things with the school districts. and if you're going to respond as a society and allow cancel culture and allow things like this, then you're permitting people to be silenced in an illegitimate way. And that just has to stop.

Our schools need help. They need parents. They need these community members to step up and help out. Our entire county is below a 45% proficiency. below. Our entire county is failing education. And what they're doing to me has taken a huge focus away from fixing those problems. And that's not okay. Because this is a lot of lies, nonsense, and misinformation.

And I am focused on facts and data and truths about what's going on. something like Doug says, and it's so wonderful to have coalition for liberty, not just help me with my case, but come to my county and make a change because without this kind of change in Monroe County, I have serious concerns for the future of our academics and the consequence to that is the failure of our youth. Well, that's the thing that I'm seeing over and over again. You know, there are these concerns about sexualized and politicized education in the classroom. But there's also the, I think, bigger issue almost that students are struggling to succeed and the standards are decreasing. So you have this focus on a politicized, sexualized thing that many activists are bringing into the classroom.

while that is taking away from focus on getting the basics down, like making sure the next generation is prepared in a constantly changing world where we're looking at trying to compete with China, which is, you know, vast, you know, they're focusing on tech in a way that we are not. And also, we live online now. These kids need to have a basic understanding of reading and writing and fact checking and, like, you know, being able to deal with a very complicated world. And the fact that the graduation, you know, the proficiency rates are so low is disturbing on so many levels. And we have a movement here that's trying to reform and trying to bring attention to that and trying to say, like, look, we need serious reform.

education, we need to break the stranglehold of the unions. COVID really put an exclamation mark on a broken system, and we have to address it. And yet it seems that system is trying to silence and, as Doug said, cancel those who are calling for reform. They also want to deter parents from speaking out. They don't want. When something's failing, Everybody should come together and embrace parents' involvement and feedback in a constructive way, the way Nicole was giving constructive feedback, expressing concerns from parents, being their champion, trying to say, hey, I'm concerned about highly sexual material being introduced in the classroom. Is this appropriate and have a debate?

Their goal is to silence the champions, the heroes that are out there like Nicole, who are standing up in trying to ask these hard questions of a failing system. And they don't want that. They don't want the debate. They want to silence, intimidate, and to deter people from ever participating. Yeah. And I've long focused on the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has started to use its weight to demonize moms for liberty in particular, but also the parental rights movement overall. So it's really great to see organizations like Coalition for Liberty standing up and Nicole fighting back saying like, these smears are smears, they're wrong. These people are actually violating the law by going after me. Where can our listeners follow you, support Coalition for Liberty, you know, read more about Nicole's case?

Coalition for Liberty. You can look at our website. We'd encourage anybody who supports what we're doing to look to donate and assist. We're going to the media all over the country to give this message out so that people can take hope that there is now somebody who is going to stick up for them. They're no longer alone. They're not going to be hit by an organized mob. Now we're going to hit the organized mob back.

And we also want the organized mob. out there to know that if they do this, if they violate the law and try to cancel somebody, there will be consequences. So please, just stop. Let's go back. If you've got ideas, let's share them. Let's talk about them. And let the best ideas go ahead and proliferate, the way the American system was designed. But cancel culture will stop. And Nicole, do you have anything to add? This has been a eye-opening journey. And I just pray that at the end, we're back and focusing on our youth because they are not succeed.

They are failing. And we need to be concerned about that as a country because they literally are our future. And if we're 42% proficiency, I think we all need to start focusing on how we're going to make excuses for the other 60% and start. figuring out how to solve our problem before, you know, this isn't what I want for our students. This isn't what I want for our children. And mine are getting better. And I want everyone else's to have the same level of education. Amen. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Nicole. And Doug, thank you for the Coalition for Liberty. Thank you, Tal. And that was Doug Turpin and

Nicole Marie Prussman with the Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania chapter of Moms for Liberty. If you enjoyed what you heard here, please leave us a five-star rating and review. We read all of your feedback. And remember to come back to this very podcast feed for our top news of the day. Every day at 5 p.m., we go through the headlines for your drive home after work. So thanks again for listening and tune back in for our top news edition. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheris.

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