Dave Aronberg
Role at the time: Lawyer, former Palm Beach County state attorney and television legal analyst
Response to this claim
Wilkins's complaint against Seraphin says she "is not now and never has been an agent for any intelligence agency" and "has never set foot in Israel."
“And she's saying they had met before. So he knew that she was not a Mossad agent.”
The full episode includes Seraphin's remarks followed by Kelly's response and legal analysis from Aronberg and Spilbor.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
The reference point is the proposition that Alexis Wilkins is, or was, a foreign intelligence agent, specifically an Israeli or Mossad "honeypot" in a relationship with Kash Patel to compromise him. Aronberg sets out the complaint's theory that Seraphin knew Wilkins was not an agent and attributes the remarks to animus toward Israel. That disputes the basis for the proposition, so we used Challenged the characterization. The closest competing label is Denied, and it is close. It loses because the line about her not being an agent restates what "she's saying" in her suit rather than his own statement of fact. Evidence level: our transcription of the episode on the show's YouTube channel.