Kentucky High Schooler Suing CNN For $275M Wants NBC, AP, Bill Maher Next
Having gone after The Washington Post and today CNN, Nicholas Sandmann’s lawyers are gearing up to whack a major media outlet “every few weeks or month.”
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“Certainly we’re looking very closely at NBC, we’re looking very closely at AP, we’re looking very closely at HBO for the conduct of Bill Maher, and we’re looking at some of the people like Kathy Griffin who sent out these horrible tweets,” Todd McMurtry told Fox News Channel’s The Story with Martha MacCallum tonight.
The remarks come after the Covington Catholic high school student hit CNN on Tuesday with a $275 million defamation suit – just as McMurtry told FNC he would do after suing the Post for $250 million a month ago.
Flying a red state flag in the recent filing, McMurtry also invoked the President of the United States against one of his favorite targets, the Jeff Zucker-led cable newser.
“Contrary to its ‘Facts First’ public relations ploy, CNN ignored the facts and put its anti-Trump agenda first in waging a 7-day media campaign of false, vicious attacks against Nicholas, a young boy who was guilty of little more than wearing a souvenir Make America Great Again cap while on a high school field trip to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the 58-page complaint declared.
The filing repeatedly alleges that CNN “negligently and recklessly” went after Sandmann as part of a pre-ordained narrative. To that end, the suit is seeking $200 million in punitive damages and another $75 million in compensatory damages for “the reputational harm, emotional distress, and mental anguish caused by CNN’s false attacks.”
At the heart of the matter against both the Jeff Bezos-owned WaPo, another top Trump foil, and CNN is the Lincoln Memorial seemingly-confrontation between Sandmann and other Kentucky teens from the school visiting the nation’s capital and a Native American activist back in January 18. Video from that day of the March For Life event shows Sandmann standing up-close to Nathan Phillips. Sandmann smirks dismissively while the activist sings and plays his drum.
Shown on CNN and written about in the Post, as well as all over the globe, the video created the wide-spread impression that the 16-year was taunting Phillips and treating the man in a derogatory manner.
An impression that subsequent footage offered several different POVs on, despite the initial condemnation.
Today’s jury-seeking suit says the now WarnerMedia-owned outlet “brought down the full force of its corporate power, influence, and wealth on Nicholas by falsely attacking, vilifying, and bullying him despite the fact that he was a minor child.” CNN is also accused of tainting Sandmann and his schoolmates with a “racist conduct” label.
“The CNN accusations are totally and unequivocally false and CNN would have known them to be untrue had it undertaken any reasonable efforts to verify their accuracy before publication of its false and defamatory accusations,” the complaint declares of the four aired segments and nine online articles it cites as the offending agents.
CNN did not return request for comment on the complaint when contacted by Deadline.
Sandmann and his parents are represented by a team of lawyers from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky’s Hemmer DeFrank Wessels firm and Atlanta, Georgia’s L. Lin Wood firm.
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