In the complaint filed today in Fulcher v. Guardian News & Media LLC (D.D.C.), the plaintiff presents the following allegations as if true:
On June 9, 2025, The Guardian published an article on its website at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/hegseth-wiretap-inquiry-justin-fulcher …. The piece contains numerous false and defamatory statements about Mr. Fulcher that are attributed to four unnamed sources. The asserted claims include:
- “Hegseth aide upended Pentagon leak inquiry with false wiretap claims.”
- “Ex-Doge staffer Justin Fulcher claimed he had evidence of a wiretap that would assist the investigation.”
- “Days before Pete Hegseth dismissed three top aides last month over a Pentagon leak probe into the disclosure of classified materials, a recently hired senior advisor said he could assist with the inquiry, according to four people familiar with the episode.”
- “The advisor, Justin Fulcher, reportedly told Hegseth’s then-chief of staff, Joe Kasper, and Hegseth’s personal attorney, Tim Parlatore, that he knew of warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) that had identified the leakers.”
- “Fulcher offered to disclose the supposed evidence so long as he could help run the investigation, three people said. Yet when he eventually sat down with officials, it became evident that he possessed no wiretap evidence, and the Pentagon had been duped.”
- “The problem was that this development wasn’t communicated to the White House—so several Trump advisers who had heard of the NSA wiretap claim believed it formed part of the ‘smoking gun’ against the three aides fired by Hegseth, until their own doubts emerged.”
- “The Guardian disclosed last month that there were unsubstantiated NSA warrantless wiretap claims underpinning the leak investigation, but its origin and Fulcher’s involvement in the controversy had not been previously reported.”
- “It was not immediately clear why Fulcher chose to involve himself in the investigation, but a few days after he was replaced as a Doge lead, he approached Kasper and expressed a willingness to help, which Kasper attributed to a desire to prove his worth, according to two people familiar with the matter.”
- “Kasper directed Fulcher to approach Parlatore, who had been assigned to supervise and manage the investigation. When Fulcher spoke to Parlatore, he suggested that he knew of NSA intercepts supposedly demonstrating that Caldwell had leaked using his personal phone, the two people said.”
- “Looking back, three people familiar with the conversations described Fulcher’s claims as conveniently aligning with the prevailing suspicions at the time about Caldwell printing large volumes of documents and his attempts to halt the leak investigation.”
- “Nevertheless, a preliminary check at that stage into the NSA claims [as alleged by Fulcher] would have shown them to be false.”
- “The assertions [by Fulcher] were relayed to Hegseth and the White House as if they were accurate.”
In truth, Mr. Fulcher never suggested, stated, or otherwise communicated to Joe Kasper, Tim Parlatore, or anyone else that the NSA had conducted warrantless surveillance identifying the leak’s source, nor that Mr. Fulcher had access to such surveillance. Moreover, Mr. Fulcher never asked Joe Kasper, Tim Parlatore, or anyone else if he could join or assist with an investigation into the leak alleged by the Article, nor did he tell anyone that he could “help run” it….
The Guardian acted with at least reckless disregard for the truth by knowingly ignoring information that made the false statements highly likely to be incorrect. For example, the NSA is prohibited by statute from intentionally targeting United States citizens, people known to be inside the United States, and communications in which both sender and recipient are located within the United States. See 50 U.S.C. § 1881a. Furthermore, the NSA is authorized to conduct electronic surveillance without a court order only to obtain “foreign intelligence” that comprises communications between foreign powers. See 50 U.S.C. § 1802; see also United States v. U.S. Dist. Ct. for E. Dist. of Mich., S. Div., 407 U.S. 297 (1972) (Fourth Amendment compliance required for domestic national-security matters).
The alleged warrantless wiretaps targeted in the Article involved individuals who were United States citizens, and the leak itself concerned a U.S.-based media outlet. Consequently, the NSA could not have conducted the described warrantless searches. Moreover, at all relevant times, Joe Kasper and Tim Parlatore, as senior officials within the Department of War, along with the president’s advisors, were fully aware of the prohibition on targeting U.S. citizens domestically. Thus, the Article’s assertions that Fulcher had informed Kasper (who had already left his post before Fulcher joined) and Parlatore about the existence of supposed warrantless taps on U.S. citizens, and that Kasper, Parlatore, and Trump advisors believed Fulcher’s purported statements or had been “duped,” are implausible.
Furthermore, even if the false statements had been true (which they are not), one would have expected Fulcher to be disqualified from government service rather than brought on as a senior adviser to the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, as the Article itself notes. In addition, relying on four unidentified sources—whose obvious bias against Fulcher is suggested by the fact that Fulcher had replaced one or more of them in the relevant roles—the Guardian knew, or should have known, that these sources were unreliable.
Finally, the Guardian treated the accounts from these unnamed sources as credible over Fulcher’s explicit denials, even though Fulcher, who maintained good standing with the United States Government, spoke to Hugo Lowell, the article’s author based in Washington, D.C., by phone prior to publication and provided a detailed explanation, beyond what appeared in the piece, as to why the statements in question were false.
Fulcher contends that the publication of the article disrupted three business deals with a potential total value of around $20 million.
Note that Fulcher is represented by Ryan Stonerock, Steven Frackman, and Dilan Esper of Harder Stonerock LLP. The firm is well-known for libel litigation, and among the trio, Dilan Esper is regarded as a serious practitioner—someone who has been cited in various venture-capital discussions and is frequently active in public commentary, where his contributions are often substantial. Of course, the caliber of the lawyers does not itself guarantee the success or failure of a case.
