Sacha Baron Cohen’s money, like teenage girls, should be kept out of Roy Moore’s reach. That’s the gist of a ruling from a New York judge, who has tossed out a $95 million lawsuit alleging that a segment in the show Who Is America? made Moore appear even more like a pedophile than he already did.
During their interview, Cohen used a wand said to detect child sex offenders on Moore, and it beeped. That made Moore angry enough to seek legal recompense, but according to court documents viewed by TMZ, he actually signed a waiver ahead of filming giving up his right to sue. The judge also noted that Who Is America? is clearly satire, and protected as free speech under the 1st Amendment.
Moore is one of the more loathsome footnotes in America’s political history. He twice served as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and both times got booted out for judicial misconduct. In the spirit of failing upwards, he then ran to represent Alabama in the US Senate during a special 2017 election. He managed to secure the Republican nomination, but his campaign fell apart after multiple women came forward accusing him of initiating sexual encounters when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers, some as young as 14. In the end, he lost to Democrat Doug Jones — the first time Alabama had voted a Democrat for Senator in over 20 years.
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Afterwards, in 2018, Moore appeared on Who Is America? He thought he would be speaking with Israeli anti-terrorist expert Erran Morad, though it turned out to be one of Cohen’s characters. During the segment, the character Morad used a wand said to be able to detect enzymes secreted by pedophiles. Predictably, it beeped like crazy when passed over Moore. The lawsuit was supposed to be Moore’s revenge. It’s unclear if he forgot he signed the waiver giving up his right to sue, if the whole legal proceeding was just a sham to save face, or — perhaps most likely given his troubled history as a judge — he truly does not understand the law. Revisit the segment below.
This is not the first frivolous lawsuit against Cohen. Last year, the family of a Holocaust survivor who appears in his latest flick Borat Subsequent Moviefilm filed a different lawsuit, claiming that she hadn’t given permission for her likeness to be used. That lawsuit was tossed when it turned out that she, too, had signed a release form. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was also notable for catching Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in a compromising situation with Borat’s “15-year-old daughter,” which tarnished his reputation during a tense presidential election.
