Tulsi Gabbard Drops $50 Million Defamation Lawsuit against Hillary Clinton

By Staff, Agencies

Former Democratic White House hopeful Tulsi Gabbard, withdrew Wednesday her defamation suit against ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The lawsuit, claiming some $50 million in damages, was filed in January over Clinton's earlier remarks made during an interview in October 2019.

While speaking with Campaign HQ podcast, Clinton alleged that one of the female candidates in the Democratic playing field, at the time quite crowded, was being groomed by Russia in hopes of a 2016-style elections meddling operation.

"They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far," Clinton said without explicitly naming Gabbard, but describing the supposed Russian favorite in a way that fit her profile.

Withdrawing the lawsuit, the Hawaii Representative said that her claims were valid, but there were more pressing things to focus on.

Among those, she pointed at fighting the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak and defeating US President Donald Trump.

Gabbard dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination on March 19 and endorsed ex-Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democrat nominee for the November vote.

Running on a non-interventionist platform that was largely foreign policy-oriented, she struggled to gain enough momentum to make it into the front-runners from the early stages of the campaign. However, she was one of the last candidates to drop out before the nomination became a two-way struggle between Biden and veteran Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.