When the New York Times stepped into the ring with Project Veritas, it thought it would be a pretty easy victory, but the group known for undercover videos and on the scene fact-finding is a lot scrappier than the “paper of record” anticipated. Now, after a recent court decision, the Times is on the backfoot.

According to the Project Veritas website, Justice Charles D. Wood of the Supreme Court of New York in Westchester County handed down a ruling on Wednesday that the New York Times’ motion to dismiss the defamation lawsuit against them by Project Veritas is denied.

It all started when the undercover work done by Project Veritas in uncovering the Minnesota ballot harvesting was labeled as “deceptive.”

(READ: Project Veritas Blows Illegal Ballot Harvesting Scheme Connected to Ilhan Omar Wide Open)

When Project Veritas brought the lawsuit against the New York Times, the Times attempted to defend itself by claiming the writer of the piece in question, Maggie Astor, was simply stating an “unverifiable expression of opinion.” Just one problem. That claim of the videos being “deceptive” was printed in the news section of the NYT, meaning they were trying to pass off the claim that Project Veritas was attempting to fool its viewers as fact.

The court agreed with Project Veritas:

Project Veritas pointed out this “opinion” was printed in the news section of The New York Times and the Court agreed: “if a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader … that it is opinion.”  The Times did not do so, and the Court found this troubling.

The Court found Project Veritas demonstrated “a substantial basis in law and fact that the Defendants [The New York Times] acted with actual malice, that is, with knowledge that the statements in the Articles were false or made with reckless disregard of whether they were false or not” and Project Veritas should be permitted to “conduct discovery.”

With this ruling, Project Veritas can now drag Astor and NYT executive editor Dean Baquet into the courtroom and answer questions under oath. The answers to these questions will be recorded and shown to the world.

This is big news. Oftentimes, mainstream news sources will make claims about right-wing investigations that are wholly inconvenient and destructive to leftist narratives or organizations. With this win, Project Veritas will teach these news outlets to think twice before they outright lie about what was discovered and reported.