GOP Strategist Likely Faces Hurdles in Defamation Suit Against Donald Trump

— -- A Republican strategist suing Donald Trump for defamation must clear high legal hurdles to prevail in her case against the GOP front-runner, according to experts.

In a lawsuit filed this week, veteran GOP strategist and frequent Fox News contributor Cheryl Jacobus is seeking at least $2 million against Trump, his campaign and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski for their allegedly false claims against her.

“The gist and sting of the defamatory statements made by Lewandowski and Trump were accusations that Jacobus had begged the Trump campaign for a job with the campaign on multiple occasions, but had been turned down [...], which caused a scorned Jacobus to seek revenge against Trump and the campaign through biased commentary in the media,” the complaint states.

Jacobus’ complaint, filed in New York state court on Monday, provides evidence that purports to show members of Trump’s nascent campaign sought out Jacobus for a job in May 2015.

But legal experts say Jacobus will face difficulty winning the case. Not only must she prove the statements were false and defamatory, she also faces a more exacting legal standard if she is deemed to be a public figure.

“A public figure suing in defamation faces very high hurdles,” Catherine Sharkey, an NYU Law professor and defamation expert, told ABC News. “A public figure has to meet the ‘actual malice’ standard, and that is an extremely high threshold.”

A lawyer for Jacobus, Jay R. Butterman, acknowledged the case would be difficult but said he was confident the facts would prove the legal elements, including malice, if necessary.

“This case is one where I think you can meet the standard. You can show the parties knew that the statements they were making were false. That doesn’t happen in many cases,” Butterman told ABC News, noting that malice can also be proved by showing Trump and Lewandowski made statements with “reckless disregard” for their truth or falsity.

At a time when the law of defamation is still catching up to the heated, rough-and-tumble shorthand exchanges often found on social media, Sharkey said Jacobus may have a tough time showing tweets by Trump and Lewandowski amount to factual claims, not merely opinion.

But Jacobus’ attorney said the factual statements Trump directed at his client are easily distinguishable from opinion.

“If you look at many of [Trump’s] statements, they’re couched in the form of opinion -- ‘This person is an imbecile, this person is an idiot, this person is a fool’ -- whatever his favorite ad hominem attack is. Those are opinion,” he said. “In this case he’s clearly asserting issues of fact.”

For its part, the Trump campaign dismissed the lawsuit as having no merit. “This is just another frivolous lawsuit and an attempt to gain notoriety at the expense of Donald Trump,” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, told ABC News in a statement.

Butterman replied that the lawsuit was not “frivolous," arguing that the facts were indisputable. He said the case would likely be settled on whether the “technical issues” of libel law were met, and noted with irony that Trump has vowed to “open up our libel laws” to raise the success rate of defamation lawsuits against the press.

“I’m fascinated by that quote because on the one hand, that’s exactly what he’s being sued for,” Butterman said. “He purposefully wrote a negative and horrible and false statement. And so I think that he would actually embrace our cause. This is exactly what he believes in.”