ABC lawyers forced Sunny Hostin of The View to read a legal notice on air to protect the network against defamatory statements she and others made about Matt Gaetz. Part of the statement included the following.

“Matt Gaetz has long denied all allegations and has not been charged with any crime.”

Facing the reality of a Trumpanized Justice Department, others are issuing statements to protect themselves against legal action.

MSNBC – “Any and all of the stories/comments on our network since Donald J. Trump came down the escalator in 2015 were performance art and no reasonable person could possibly have confused it with real news, so it’s not our fault.”

Kamala Harris – “My phrase ‘Unburdened by what has been,’ is now trademarked and cannot be used without permission and/or remuneration. Preferably remuneration since my campaign owes $20 million bucks.”

Adam Schiff – “I’m taking this opportunity to clarify that when I said there is ‘Plenty of evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians,’ I did not say it was good evidence. And all of it came from Hillary.”

Amazon Prime – “At no time in the promotion of the ‘fight’ between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul did we claim that it would resemble a real fight. To compensate Prime members for their wasted time, we have some sweet Black Friday deals.”

Pete The Possum – “While I shared the same animal shelter with Peanut The Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon, I did not have intimate relations with them and could not possibly have contracted rabies and don’t need to be dissected.”

Jussie Smollett – “Now that my conviction for faking a hate crime has been overturned, I am committing myself to finding the real two white men, wearing MAGA hats, and carrying bleach and a hangman’s noose, who were hunting gay black men carrying a Subway sandwich, at 2 am, in sub-zero weather.”

Subway – “There is no truth to the rumor that Jussie Smollett will be the new spokesperson for Subway and there is no evidence that our delicious, foot-long, plant based, Veggie Delite that he was carrying played any role in what took place.”

Kamala Harris – “While I did not actually work at McDonald’s as a teenager, I did identify as a McDonald’s employee which is essentially the same thing.”

DNC – “All of Kamala Harris’ policy statements and positions, were her creation and not necessarily shared by the Democrat Party.”*

*To the best of the meridian-street editorial board’s knowledge, Harris took no positions during her campaign.