Family of Covington Catholic student hits Washington Post with $250M libel suit

Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann and his classmates were viciously accused of acting disrespectfully toward a Native American man during a school trip to the March For Life in Washington D.C. But as more videos surfaced, the real story came out — and the 16-year-old Kentucky high school student is now fighting back against the media’s “false and defamatory” reports.

Sandmann’s family and legal team is suing The Washington Post for $250 million in damages after the newspaper allegedly published at least seven articles that falsely accused the high school student of “racist and improper conduct.”

All the Facts

The controversy erupted in January, when a brief video clip of Sandmann’s encounter with Native American protestor Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. went viral.

Multiple media outlets and journalists rushed to accuse Sandmann and his classmates, some of whom were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, of mocking Phillips, who was beating a drum and chanting. Take a look at a clip of the encounter:

But it was soon discovered that the above clip didn’t tell the whole story. Full video of the incident showed that the student group, which had gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to wait for buses, were first accosted by a group of protesters known as the Black Hebrew Israelites, who had berated both the students and the group of Native Americans with chants and offensive and racist remarks.

The Covington Catholic students said later that they were shouting school spirit cheers alongside the Native Americans playing drums in an effort to drown out the invective from the Black Hebrew Israelites. Sandmann said his choice to stand still and smile when Phillips approached and confronted him was meant to defuse the situation.

“I never interacted with [Phillips]. I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves,” a statement from Sandmann released after the encounter read. “To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me. We had already been yelled at by another group of protestors, and when the second group approached I was worried that a situation was getting out of control where adults were attempting to provoke teenagers.”

Modern-day McCarthyism

But the full story didn’t come out until after many mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, capitalized on the widespread outrage.

“The Post bullied an innocent child with an absolute disregard for the pain and destruction its attacks would cause to his life,” Sandmann’s attorneys, L. Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry, wrote in the suit. The attorneys added:

The Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann…an innocent secondary school child.

Wood and McMurtry went on to accuse the post of “wrongfully” targeting and bullying Sandmann “by falsely accusing him of instigating the January 18 incident.” They alleged that “the Post conveyed that Nicholas engaged in acts of racism by ‘swarming’ Phillips, ‘blocking’ his exit away from the students, and otherwise engaging in racist misconduct.”

The attorneys also accused the Post of ignoring “basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump” and his supporters.

The suit seeks $250 million in compensatory and punitive damages — and it has the support of none other than the commander-in-chief himself, who tweeted on Wednesday: “Go get them Nick. Fake News!”

“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

Kristine Coratti Kelly, a spokesperson for The Washington Post, said on Tuesday that the paper is “reviewing a copy of the lawsuit, and we plan to mount a vigorous defense.”