The Covington Catholic High School smirking teen is back — and armed with a $250 million lawsuit against the Washington Post.
The family of Nick Sandmann, the MAGA hat-wearing Kentucky teen captured in a standoff with a Native American elder in a video that went viral in January, filed a defamation lawsuit against the Post today.
The family’s lawyers allege the Post “engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism” with its coverage of the incident and “wrongfully targeted and bullied” Sandmann.
“The Post bullied an innocent child with an absolute disregard for the pain and destruction its attacks would cause to his life,” attorneys L. Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry wrote in the suit, which was posted on their website and which they say was filed in the Eastern District of Kentucky.
It’s not clear why lawyers are targeting the Post specifically, since plenty of news outlets covered the story extensively.
Fox News points out that Sandmann’s lawyers earlier this month sent more than 50 preservation letters — a warning that litigation might be coming — to over 50 media organizations, celebrities, and politicians.
The amount the family is seeking in damages, $250 million, is the amount Amazon CEO and frequent Trump target Jeff Bezos paid for the Post when he bought it in 2013.
Sandmann’s lawyers claim the suit is not brought with a political agenda.
But few believe it.
In fact, Trump has already taken notice of the suit:
“The Washington Post ignored basic journalistic standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump.” Covington student suing WAPO. Go get them Nick. Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2019
On January 18, videos surfaced online showing Sandmann staring at Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder, as Phillips sang and played the drum at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
The two were surrounded by Sandmann’s classmates, many of whom were wearing MAGA hats (as was Sandmann), chanting, and jumping.
They had attended the anti-abortion March for Life rally earlier that day.
Watch what happened here:
The initial narrative was that the boys were harassing Phillips, but more layers were later added to the story: Longer videos emerged showing a few members of the Black Hebrew Israelites taunting the students, and Phillips says he stepped in to try to defuse the tension.
Some observers, including Phillips, said they heard the boys chanting “build that wall” and “Trump 2020,” but those chants aren’t audible in the videos.
Videos do show some of the students doing a “tomahawk chop.”
Sandmann’s family hired a PR firm, and Sandmann did an interview on the Today show, in which he said he wasn’t sorry for what happened.
It’s not clear how the Sandmanns’ lawsuit will play out, or whether there will be others.
It is, of course, notable that the family is targeting the Post, Trump’s media enemy No. 1, and Bezos, whom the president frequently targets as well.
Plenty of outlets covered the incident and ran with the initial narrative.
It is the only way to put chains on fake news. They made up a story to go with the pictures. Now they are the first of many lawsuits to come. They attacked this child because of their politics. Now they pay.