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On Who’s America?, Cohen disguises himself to talk to (and impersonate) American politicians and conservative figures. In the episode in question, Cohen impersonates fictional Israeli counter-terrorism expert Eran Morad and interviews Moore, to whom he presents a wand-like device that he claims can detect “sex offenders and especially pedophiles.” It starts beeping when Cohen waves it at Moore, a reference to a series of investigative Post reports from late 2017 in which several women shared stories about Moore stalking them when they were teenagers, and he was 30 years old. The former judge lost a special election for a Senate seat in December 2017.
Cohen — known for poking fun at prominent figures, often while playing his characters Ali G, Borat Sagdiev and Bruno Gehardt — won the earliest round of the legal battle when a district judge in April 2019 upheld the validity of the consent agreement signed by Moore. and ordered that the libel suit be transferred to New York. Moore earlier said in a statement that he believed he had been flown to Washington to “receive an award for my strong support for Israel.”
In July 2021, U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan of New York dismissed the lawsuit, which also contained allegations of emotional distress and fraud by Moore’s wife. Cronan, pointing to the waiver Moore signed before the interview, said Cohen’s claims were “obviously a joke and no reasonable viewer would see it any other way.”
The appeals court’s brief order agreed that “the segment in question is clearly comedic.”
“Baron Cohen may have implied (despite his characteristic denials of any belief that Judge Moore is a pedophile) that he believed Judge Moore’s accusers,” the court filing said, “but he did not allude to the existence of any is an independent factual basis for this belief other than the obviously farcical pedophile detection “device” that no reasonable person could believe was an actual, functioning piece of technology.
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