On Friday at Steyn HQ, we received an inquiry from a reporter seeking a comment on "the agreement between Mann and NRO." Unfortunately, having had no communication from our "co-defendants" National Review (NR), we had to scramble around a bit to figure out what the reporter was talking about.
A different publication, The Daily Pennsylvanian, reports:
Penn professor Michael Mann has reached an agreement with the National Review that releases him from paying the company's remaining legal fees from his defamation case in exchange for dropping ongoing litigation against the magazine.
[UPDATE] See also this decent take in The Philadelphia Inquirer:
In 2024, the case went to trial in front of a Washington, D.C., jury, and Mann won a $1 million verdict against the bloggers. But following the verdict, D.C. Superior Court Judge Alfred S. Irving reduced the verdict to $5,000, sanctioned the scientist for misrepresentations in court, and ordered him to pay his opponents' legal fees to the tune of $1 million...
Mann agreed to drop the appeal and not pursue other legal action related to the posts against the National Review, and in exchange the publication agreed to withdraw its request for legal fees, according to a copy of the settlement.
It turns out, in classic National Review fashion, they had a winning hand but, they have managed to turn it into a loser...
You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em.....'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser
In exchange for dropping the half million Mann was ordered to pay them, Mann will drop his appeal of the verdicts in their favor. In other words: Mann wins, NR loses.
Michael Mann Finally Goes Away https://t.co/283dZ5Ocly
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) October 31, 2025
Funny. We see what you did there! More on that in a bit...
[This, from the same magazine that just published a hit piece on Phyllis Schlafly:
National Review's 70th anniversary includes an attack on Phyllis Schlafly, perhaps the most successful activist the conservative movement ever produced. The author doesn't like the fact that Schlafly endorsed Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/KtSuG00QZc
— Matthew Schmitz (@matthewschmitz) October 28, 2025
The last time I saw Mrs Schlafly was at a David Horowitz event at the Breakers in Palm Beach. Mark had just given a barn-burner of a speech and she had made her way through the crowd escorted by her walker to congratulate Mark. She was very petite, and I immediately felt protective asking those crowding around to make room for her. At the mention of her name, all around made way and stood in rapt fascination as she and Mark conversed. A great lady. But I digress...]
As longtime readers know. Mark was once National Review's "Happy Warrior". He headlined events for NR on land and sea. Indeed, so committed was Mark that he made his way to speak at a fundraiser for NR in Boston just one day after a car accident with a head injury and an excruciating case of tinnitus.
At the time, Mark's syndicated column appeared at NR once a week. He also wrote feature articles for the magazine and contributed often to "The Corner" - which was NR's blog. It was the place to post small items that did not rise to article level and sometimes a bit of back and forth between contributors.
It was a few days after the Louis Freeh report into the cover-up by Penn State officials including its president Graham Spanier* of former football coach Jerry Sandusky's crimes against children. It was a subject Mark wrote about several months earlier: "Penn State's institutional wickedness".
As with Mark's coverage of the Pakistani Muslim Rape Gang Crisis in the UK, Mark has always been interested in how these things are allowed to happen and how they are covered up.
Mark has also always been interested in the iconic "hockey stick" touted by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) as justification for their efforts before he even knew anything about its creator Michael E. Mann. Mark referred to the stick as "fraudulent" in publications all around the world. A fact that came even more in focus after a whistle-blower released email exchanges between Mann and other "climate scientists" that sought to "hide the decline" in his "statistical model" which purported to show a rise in global temperatures.
In the case of Mark's blog post at The Corner at National Review, it was others that made the connection with the institutional wickedness at Penn before Mark did, including our friend Ann McElhinney who covered the trial with her husband Phelim McAleer.
And, Peter Wood at The Chronicle of Higher Education in a piece titled "A Culture of Evasion".
And, of course, our co-defendant Rand Simberg for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
It was Rand's column that Mark quoted from in "Football and Hockey" a blog post at The Corner - whilst making clear:
Not sure I'd have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does but he has a point.
Mark added:
...when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to "investigate" Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing.
Mann's lawyer demanded an apology from National Review to which Rich Lowry told him to "Get Lost" - which is why Lowry is now proclaiming that Mann has finally "gone away". Congrats?!
But, Mann hasn't gone away. Not by a long shot. Mark and Rand and CEI are still in the case.
You see Mann added Lowry's piece "Get Lost" to his complaint. And, though this article was eventually tossed out of the case, it was this piece - that Mark did not write and had nothing to do with - that Mann's lawyer displayed in his closing argument to the jury.
So not only was Mark convicted for being Rush Limbaugh's guest host, many believe he was also convicted for being the closest thing to National Review in National Review's absence. Readers will recall there were no damages (despite Mann's fraudulent case for some for which he has been sanctioned). Nonetheless, Mark was originally slapped with one million dollars in punitive damages by a liberal DC jury - subsequently reduced to a mere 5k.
This predictable result was one reason why Mark fought - to no avail - to have references to National Review excluded from the trial. As I said to that reporter:
Mr. Steyn has been trying to separate himself from National Review for over a decade. So, from that perspective, he is happy to see the back of them.
Mr. Steyn is not a party to this agreement and, as such, Dr. Mann still owes an unspecified amount to Mr. Steyn as part of the court sanction against Mann for presenting false evidence to the jury.
As to why Mark wanted to separate from National Review that is a longer story for another day, but it started with an old Dean Martin joke followed by a disturbing revelation and ended with Mark deciding not to renew his contract and going his own way in the case.
Later certain officers at National Review would give false testimony about this chain of events in furtherance of their new principled position (after raising a boatload of cash on the basis of their "fight for free speech"). As Mark said in 2021:
I'm not unsympathetic to the vanity litigant's characterization of the decision. National Review won on the narrow ground that I wasn't an "employee" of the magazine and therefore that they're not responsible for whatever defamations I publish under their shingle. I had no idea this was a thing in American law, and, if it is, I don't know why they couldn't have advanced it, say, seven years ago and saved us all a lot of time. As to whether it's "a controversial statute", it would certainly seem to have the potential of becoming a Defamer's Charter, since all a publication would have to do (as many increasingly do do) is make all their staff writers freelance contributors and they can publish any old bollocks....
I'm generally wary of cases with multiple defendants, and I was particularly doubtful about standing in the dock with NR before an impressionable jury. For almost a decade, I have stood on the truth - and Rich Lowry and his guys never did, not in their court filings , but instead tossed spaghetti of sophistry at the walls hoping a strand or two would stick: Ooh, no, we're not a publisher, just an Internet platform provider like Facebook, open to all; Steyn is nothing to do with us, just a guy who bust into the cockpit and flew the NR plane into the mountain; etc. In the course of his spaghetti-hurling, their awful splapdash lawyer Michael Carvin didn't check nuttin' and, even in his brief to the Supreme Court, got all kinds of things wrong, including putting other people's words into my mouth. I am very relieved that I will not be going into court with him and Lowry. [emphasis added]
So now National Review has finally "gone away". Good riddance.
* Our eagle-eyed club member Steve from Manhattan has noted that Michael E. Mann continues to thank convicted sexual abuse cover-upperer Graham Spanier in his most recent book. Mark questioned Mann re the odd inclusion of Spanier's name in the acknowledgements of his previous books - post Spanier's trial. But Mann testified at the time, he simply hadn't updated them. Weird.
** In the comments below, club member Sabre Mike says:
Heard National Review is celebrating this with a special offer: One year subscriptions for 30 pieces of silver.
Melissa is there any way you can put together a compilation of the best bits from the deposition Mark did where he tore Rich and NR to pieces?
It would be my pleasure, Sabre Mike. See pages 60-79 of Mark's deposition here. Or, in video form here starting at 1:07:15.
For more on Dr Fraudpants himself, Michael E. Mann, get your copy of:
"A Disgrace To The Profession"
The World's Scientists, In Their Own Words, On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick And Their Damage To Science
Volume I
Compiled and edited by Mark Steyn, with illustrations by Josh
Club members may also enjoy my narration of "A Disgrace To The Profession" here.
Also, stock up on your Steyn vs Stick swag here.
To support Mark's continued fight, please join The Mark Steyn Club and/ or buy a gift certificate - they never expire!
