During the segment, Cohen interviewed Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and controversial Republican who lost a special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, with the ploy to get an award in honor of his support of the State of Israel. Baron Cohen introduced himself as an Israeli counterterrorism expert and former intelligence agent to the department, during which he showed news clippings that reported allegations from Judge Moore’s Senate campaign that he had engaged in sexual harassment. (Moore has denied the allegations.) As a character, Baron Cohen described a fictional “pedophile detective”. During the episode, the device — which looks like a handheld metal detector — appeared to beep near Moore, suggesting he was a pedophile. Moore walked out of the interview. In its ruling, the Second Circuit said Judge Moore signed a waiver of permission before the interview, the plain text of which barred Moore from future claims for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and fraud. The court also agreed with a lower court, “that the segment at issue was clearly comedy and that no reasonable viewer would conclude otherwise.” “Humor is an important means of legitimate expression and central to the well-being of individuals, society and their government,” the ruling said. Larry Kleiman, Moore’s attorney, told CNN on Friday that they plan to file for a retrial. Klayman said he believed the decision was a “terrible decision” that goes beyond Roy Moore, suggesting that at least two of the three-judge panel’s judges, all of whom were appointed by Democratic Presidents Clinton and Obama, disagreed with Moore because he is a Republican. CNN turned to the US Court of Appeals for a response to Klayman’s claim of bias. Kleiman added that he believed the case should have gone to a jury and that the release Moore signed was “ambiguous.” In the consent agreement, Moore had manually deleted a section that referred to sexual content. At that point, that court ruled, “We are not persuaded.” “After nearly four years of litigation, it appears that Mr. Moore’s frivolous lawsuit is finally over,” Russell Smith, Baron Cohen’s attorney, told CNN on Friday. CNN has reached out to CBS for comment. Showtime declined to comment on the decision when contacted by CNN.
