Independent political journalist Matt Taibbi has filed a defamation lawsuit against liberal writer Eoin Higgins and publisher Bold Type Books, according to court records. The case, Taibbi v. Higgins (1:25-cv-09511), was filed on November 13, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Taibbi is represented by Garson, Segal, Steinmetz LLP, and the suit is classified under torts related to libel and slander.The complaint centers on claims made in Higgins’ 2025 book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. Taibbi alleges the defendants falsely portrayed him as being financially influenced by billionaire Elon Musk following his publication of the “Twitter Files,” a series of reports based on internal Twitter documents provided after Musk acquired the platform. According to the lawsuit, the book incorrectly claims that Taibbi’s income “exploded” during the project and that he “cashed in” as a result of his reporting.Taibbi addressed the lawsuit publicly on social media, strongly denying the allegations. “I’ve never taken a dime from any billionaire,” he wrote, objecting in particular to being described as “owned” and “bought” on the book’s cover. Calling the claims “absolutely outrageous,” Taibbi said he felt obligated to take legal action to defend his reputation. The case remains pending in federal court.
I can still remember, many years ago, seeing Matt Taibbi’s headlines in Rolling Stone magazine that all seemed to carry the same slant: Democrats good, Republicans bad, bad, bad and evil, even. At the time, I read Rolling Stone for its music coverage, not its politics. But even if I’d had any interest in browsing Taibbi’s many one-sided diatribes about how the GOP was supposedly going to destroy the world, from the headlines alone it was immediately clear that I wouldn’t be getting journalism, just the opinions of a far-Left hack. Adding to that (as I found out later) was the fact that in the mid-90s Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner had left his longtime wife and children for a man and was, by all appearances, a cheating, wealthy, narcissistic liberal and major Democratic donor who used the magazine to push Democrat propaganda and smear Republicans. That context explained Taibbi’s writings perfectly.
Then, after Taibbi left Rolling Stone in the mid-2010s, his name started popping up again (on my radar) on podcasts, some TV and eventually through the Twitter Files. This time, it genuinely seemed like he had gone independent. He was still covering politics, but now he was doing real journalism: following the facts and reporting objectively, regardless of who came out looking bad. That shift not only made me a fan of Taibbi, but also earned him respect from many conservatives and independents on Twitter—while turning him into a target for liberals who once idolized him. And now this shit? Damn right Taibbi should sue, and I hope he wins...bigly.
