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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Queens Councilman Fires Shot at New York Post

QUEENS, N.Y. (CN) - Ruben Wills, a Queens city councilman battling corruption charges, claims in court that the New York Post defamed him.

The single-page summons with notice filed Monday against NYP Holdings and reporters Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein takes aim at a May 11, 2014, article the women authored.

Wills says the article falsely portrayed him "as an informant who wore a wire 'to get the goods on fellow lawmakers' and conduct 'secret recordings' at the behest of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman."

The councilman seeks $500,000 from the journalists.

Vincent and Klein's article last year came days after the Post reported that Wills had been arrested and charged him with fraud, theft and falsifying records.

Wills appeared in the pages of the Post this year as well after he was arrested again this past February on charges that he filed bogus financial-disclosure reports with the city Conflicts of Interest Board.

Wills, 46, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He filed this week's summons with notice pro se in Queens County Supreme Court.

Ironically, the councilman's predecessor, Allan Jennings, sued a newspaper for defamation as well.

Jennings claimed in 2011 that the Queens Chronicle turned black voters against him by allegedly falsely reporting that he had placed an ad in a Chinese-language newspaper "declaring his love for all Asian women."

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