Thomas Clare

The defamation lawyer on both sides of the media war

Thomas Clare’s boutique is the firm that took $787.5 million from Fox News — and the firm that the New York Times then investigated for how it got there. That paradox is the whole of Clare’s public profile, and no standard reference entry puts it first. They list the cases: Dominion against Fox, Rolling Stone, the Macrons against Candace Owens. What they miss is the shape: Clare Locke LLP represents clients on both sides of the American media war, sues journalists and hires from the anti-press right, and was itself torn apart — according to the Times — by a dispute over whether to fight the Dominion case at all. Clare, with his wife and co-founder, denied that account. But the firm has been, for a decade, a mirror of the conflict it litigates.

Clare founded Clare Locke in 2014 with Elizabeth “Libby” Locke, his wife; both were partners at Kirkland & Ellis, and they remain the firm’s only equity partners. Bloomberg Law described it in 2023 as a boutique of 17 lawyers in Alexandria, Virginia, and the two founders as “among the most high-profile lawyers in the defamation and media law space” (Bloomberg Law). The portfolio is deliberately ecumenical. The firm’s clients have included WeWork boss Adam Neumann and former NBC News personality Matt Lauer — figures of the celebrity and corporate right and center — and in 2016 it won a $3 million jury verdict against Rolling Stone over false claims in a 2014 story about campus culture at the University of Virginia (Bloomberg Law). Clare Locke had earlier hired counsel Jered Ede from Project Veritas, where he had spent more than two years as chief legal officer of the conservative activist group — a hire that sits, on the record, alongside the firm’s representation of Dominion Voting Systems in the most consequential media-defamation case in American history (Bloomberg Law).

Dominion, the $787.5 million, and the split

Clare Locke was co-counsel to Dominion Voting Systems — alongside Susman Godfrey and Delaware’s Farnan — in the lawsuit that produced the landmark $787.5 million defamation settlement from Fox News in April 2023, on the eve of trial. Three of the firm’s departing partners had worked on the case. And then the firm fractured (Bloomberg Law).

In August 2023, four non-equity partners — Megan Meier, Daniel Watkins, Andrew Phillips, and Dustin Pusch — gave notice and formed Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch, taking about half the partnership with them. Watkins said they were inspired by “the entrepreneurial spirit” of Clare Locke’s founders; Meier said they wanted to build “the next-generation premiere defamation law firm.” Clare, in an emailed statement, called expanding the number of firms doing this work “a good thing for the plaintiffs’ side defamation bar” (Law.com). The departing partners were careful to pledge respect for the free press — Meier told Law.com that much of the practice is pre-litigation crisis work, “seeking to work with responsible editors, responsible journalists to get the record corrected without the need for litigation” (Law.com).

The Times gave the split a darker gloss. In April 2024 it reported that Libby Locke had “repeatedly tried to pull her firm off” the Dominion lawsuit, “shattering morale and confidence inside the small but formidable firm” — and that her alleged actions caused most of the firm’s partners to decide to resign. Both Locke and Tom Clare denied the allegations (Bloomberg Law). The portrait is of a firm whose biggest victory nearly destroyed it, and a founder whose own conduct — in the Times’ telling — sat at the center of the crisis. Clare’s denial is on the record; the internal truth is not.

Macron v. Owens

The current marquee matter keeps the pattern going. In July 2025, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron — represented by Clare Locke and Delaware’s Farnan LLP — sued conservative podcaster Candace Owens in Delaware Superior Court for defamation, over her repeated claims that the French first lady is secretly transgender. At a hearing on Owens’s motion to dismiss on July 27, 2026, Owens’s counsel argued the only logical reason to file in Delaware was its two-year statute of limitations versus France’s three-month limit, and that Owens — broadcasting, per her brief, from “the basement of her home in Nashville” — has no personal connection to the state. Thomas Clare, arguing for the Macrons, countered that the business entities named as defendants were registered in Delaware by Owens herself for the state’s legal protections: letting her exit would produce the “absurd” result of “Delaware is good enough for me but not for thee.” “These companies are the ones that actually published the defamatory statements,” he said. Judge Sheldon K. Rennie adjourned without ruling. The case is Macron v. Owens, Del. Super. Ct., No. N25C-07-194 (Bloomberg Law).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim any connection between Thomas Clare or Clare Locke and 1789 Capital or Axiom Space — three targeted searches found none, and no internal links to those profiles are included. It does not assert Clare’s education or early-career history, which were not verified in citable sources. It does not assert the Times’ allegations about the Dominion case as fact — both Clare and Locke denied them, and this profile attributes the claims. It does not claim Clare Locke took a cut of the Dominion settlement (its compensation was fees, not a share of the payout), nor does it assert reported representations of Bill Ackman, David Sacks, or other clients seen only in snippets or behind paywalls. The “17 lawyers” headcount is dated to August 2023 and may be stale.