From today's opinion in Moore v. Baron Cohen, by Judges Rosemary S. Pooler, Gerard E. Lynch, Raymond J. Lohier, Jr.:
Baron Cohen created, co-produced, and co-wrote Who Is America?, a television program that aired on Showtime. As part of the show, Baron Cohen and his team convinced Roy Moore ("Judge Moore"), a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama and a former Senate candidate from Alabama, to fly to Washington, D.C. to receive a prize in honor of his support for the state of Israel and to be interviewed by an Israeli television program.
It was a ruse: He was instead interviewed by Baron Cohen, who presented himself as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert and former intelligence agent. The episode of the program in which the interview aired led into the interview with news clips reporting allegations from the time of Judge Moore's Senate campaign that he had engaged in sexual misconduct as an adult, including with one woman who was fourteen at the time.
During the interview itself, Baron Cohen, in character, described a fictional device that the Israeli military had purportedly developed to detect underground tunnels, which would also "identify other abnormalities," including "sex offenders and particularly pedophiles," by picking up on a certain "enzyme" that they secrete at "three times the level of non-perverts."
Baron Cohen then produced a wand-like object that was supposed to be that device and waved it over Judge Moore, at which point it beeped. After a tense exchange between the two, Judge Moore exited the set, amid protestations by Baron Cohen that he was not saying that Judge Moore was a pedophile.
Judge Moore sued, but the court said his defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud claims were barred by a waiver that Moore had signed:
