Sheldon Adelson, litigious bully and world-class terrible person

Sheldon Adelson

Las Vegas casino mogul and Republican benefactor Sheldon Adelson may have all the money in the world, but that doesn’t stop him from being utterly morally bankrupt – as well as a censorious, thin-skinned litigious bully. Wall Street Journal columnist John L. Smith learned all these things first-hand when Adelson tried to bankrupt him over a book he wrote, and then tried to use Smith’s cancer-stricken daughter to coerce an apology from him.

He sued me (and my publisher) while my then-8-year-old daughter Amelia was suffering from brain cancer, which had metastasized to her spine. She was literally fighting for her life. I learned of the impending litigation while at her bedside at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

With the book’s diminutive publisher Barricade Books immediately trying to settle in an unsuccessful effort to avoid its own bankruptcy reorganization, it was defense through appeasement—the worst possible strategy when dealing with a billionaire bully. Barricade offered to print a correction or a retraction, but every offer was rebuffed.

Sensing weakness, Adelson’s attorney pushed on with the lawsuit. By 2007, we were exhausted. Adelson offered to place $200,000 in a medical and education account for my daughter’s benefit, in exchange for me signing an onerous and untrue letter of apology. I also couldn’t disclose the account’s existence to my bosses at the Las Vegas Review-Journal where I was, and still am, a columnist. Needless to say, I rejected the offer.

This story is a few years old (the article was published back in 2013), but still, I struggle to find the words to do justice to such breathtaking villainy. It must say quite a lot about the modern Republican Party that they’re happy to partner up with a man who uses sick children for emotional blackmail against his critics.

It’s not the first or last time he’s sued people for saying things about him he didn’t like. He also went after another journalist who had the gall to describe him as “a scrappy, foul-mouthed billionaire from working-class Dorchester, Mass.”. I hope he doesn’t discover what the whole rest of the Internet is saying about him. I think it’s a lot meaner than that.

Smith’s case had a happy ending: He found a former federal prosecutor who represented him pro bono and slapped Adelson hard enough to make him go away. (His daughter got better and is alive and well today.) But Adelson’s lawsuit is a typical SLAPP move, intended to intimidate and punish rather than to right any supposed wrongs. Adelson lost in court, but he got the victory he was really after: making journalists think twice before daring to write anything critical of him. And to a censoring, lawsuit-happy bully, that’s all that matters.

(via @SeanMcElwee)