People forget how common, old, and effective that technique is. Even without the lawsuits, the common Gish-Gallop of yellow-journalism is an ages old attack.

I'll always remember it as an off shoot of "Obama's Signature Move", getting corrupt insiders to leak things out of context to form empty accusations. Then you need an activist judge to accept an obviously tongue-in-cheek accusation and entertain it as if it were serious.