Charles J. Harder

In cases that generated the year's biggest Washington headlines, Harder has worked behind-the-scenes, representing President Donald Trump and members of his administration and family.

Just this month, he's representing Trump in a defamation case brought by porn actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She claims Trump wrote a defamatory tweet in response to her allegations that they had an affair, but in an anti-SLAPP motion, Harder characterized the tweet as "satirical." In the motion, Harder wrote that Trump's free speech is being infringed upon by the defamation claim. Clifford v. Trump, 18-cv-02217 (C.D. Cal., filed March 8, 2018).

In his cases, Harder often represents clients in defamation and privacy claims, a specialty solidified after his 2016 takedown of Gawker.com. In the case, Harder's client Terry Bollea, better known as wrestler Hulk Hogan, sued the gossip website for invasion of privacy and emotional distress. He won a $140 million verdict, though the two sides settled for $31 million in November 2016, a move that bankrupted Gawker. Bollea v. Gawker Media LLC, 12-12447-CI (6th Jud. Cir. Fl., March 18, 2016).

Since then, Harder's been tapped to represent Trump in multiple matters, including ones involving former aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman for allegedly violating a confidentiality agreement in her recent book; former chief strategist Steve Bannon; and author Michael Wolff over Wolff's allegedly libelous book "Fire and Fury."

In October, Harder briefly represented Harvey Weinstein in the initial hours after The New York Times published a story alleging sexual harassment, a stint he characterizes as "short-lived."

He's received more privacy and defamation cases after the Gawker case, he said, and the accompanying media attention has likewise grown.

"I'll take the same approach: I listen to clients really carefully and I try to give them the best advice ... so that hasn't changed," he said. "But when you have cases with lots of media attention, then you have to give your clients more advice, which is, don't just consider the legal part of it, also consider the media part of it. I find myself having a lot of conversations like those."

Despite the emergence of social media like Twitter, Harder said the nature of defamation law has essentially remained the same, though the number of claims brought has increased.

"All the new ways of communicating still fall within the same law, it's just a different mode of communication," he said. "There has been an expansion of communication, so there's kind of a higher frequency of cases, I would say ... technology's made changes around the edges, but it doesn't change the law."

-- Erin Lee