Former state rep. dropping defamation suit
Former state Rep. Carl Trujillo, who was defeated in last year’s Democratic primary after a lobbyist publicly accused him of sexual harassment, has dropped a defamation suit against his accuser and the organization she worked for, saying the suit’s main goal was to get public apologies.
Trujillo, who lost his state House seat to Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, said in a lengthy statement posted Tuesday on Facebook that he received “implicit and explicit threats” in response to his defamation suit against Laura Bonar — the lobbyist who accused Trujillo of inappropriate touching and sexual harassment — and her employer, Animal Protection Voters. He filed the suit in February.
“I realized that I was exposing myself and my family to further financial and emotional damage, all for an apology and justice that I will likely never receive,” Trujillo said in the Facebook statement. “This is why I have chosen to withdrew the defamation case.”
He didn’t give examples of any threats.
Trujillo, who was first elected to the Legislature in 2012, blamed news media, claiming journalists did not listen to “the actual facts” of the case. This, he said, “is a tragedy for the #Metoo movement, all of the women who have legitimate complaints, the people of my district who were denied representation due to what is essentially election tampering, not to mention my career and my family, including my wife and my 10-year-old son, who have had to live with the consequences of this political dirty trick. “
Levi Monagle, an Albuquerque lawyer representing Bonar, responded in an email to Trujillo’s statement.
“For Mr. Trujillo to attempt to drape himself in the flag of the Me Too movement in light of these facts is offensive to me,” Monagle said, asserting that “his baseless defamation lawsuit arguably violated New Mexico’s antiSLAPP statute.”
SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or litigation aimed at silencing criticism, especially of public figures and private businesses. The state has a law designed to shield people from retaliatory litigation.
Monagle also said, “It is not ‘election tampering’ for a victim of sexual harassment to ask her accuser to resign from public office — it is protected speech under the First Amendment. To accuse Ms. Bonar and/or her co-workers of ‘election tampering’ — which is an accusation of criminal conduct, and a readily falsifiable accusation at that — comes far closer to ‘defamation’ than anything Ms. Bonar and her colleagues have said about Mr. Trujillo.”
Lawyers for Bonar and Animal Protection Voters, in motions filed in the defamation case, asked the court to dismiss the case and order Trujillo to pay their legal expenses.
Trujillo on Facebook said he has spent $115,000 in legal fees to fight Bonar’s accusations and said the state spent $210,000 to investigate the claims.
A legislative investigative subcommittee, in a 43-page report published in July 2018, found probable cause for two of Bonar’s accusations but dismissed others.
The subcommittee was set to pursue ethics charges against Trujillo but in November dropped the case after Bonar declined to testify under oath.