The righteous indignation of those yelling "defamation" rings mighty hollow. The same folks now righteously indignant about one defamation previously had no problem accusing certain individuals on this forum of far FAR worse than merely "being a paid spokesman" for LM. So if one is going to accuse another of "defamation", may I suggest one take a hard look in the mirror first?
I think you might be getting confused between who is saying what or perhaps confusing that issue on purpose.
Some of us haven't accused anyone of being paid spokesmen but we still think it is fairly useless to make totally unsubstantiated claims of bribery and it doesn't really matter "who hit who first" - the result is just noise.