Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School student in the Make America Great Again hat who was falsely condemned by the media over his encounter with a Native American protestor in January, brought legal action against the Washington Post for libel this week. His lawyers are seeking $250 million in damages — the amount that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos paid when his company, Nash Holdings, brought the Post in 2013.
The libel suit “isn’t about the money, it’s about the message,” attorney Todd McMurtry told Fox News’s Todd Starnes on Wednesday. “The reason we want to obtain a large verdict is so that things that things like the things that happened to Nick did not happen to others.”
“A weaponized publication”
“Money is the way to inflict enough suffering on, you know, a weaponized publication like The Washington Post, so that that they won’t do it again,” he added.
And the WaPo isn’t the only one at fault. Multiple news outlets, journalists, pundits, and celebrities joined in bashing and threatening the high school student without waiting to hear the whole story.
“We’ve identified a number of other individuals of news outlets that we think are also potentially liable for defamation,” McMurtry said. “We’ve analyzed these matters and we think we have a good-faith basis to bring these claims and over the next 30 and 60 days, you will see more lawsuits.”
Media jumps to conclusions
Sandmann found himself the target of negative news headlines and a vicious social media mob after a short video of him standing face-to-face with a Native American man went viral. “Time to Take on the Covington ‘smirk,'” read one Washington Post headline. “The Covington students and the calculated art of making people uncomfortable,” read another. “Video Of Kentucky Students Mocking Native American Man Draws Outcry,” NPR wrote.
The white teen in a MAGA hat was, of course, assumed to have initiated the encounter, and was therefore accused of being a disrespectful bigot and a white nationalist, among other things. But it turned out that this characterization was not accurate.
Longer videos revealed that the Covington students, who were in D.C. to attend the March for Life, were waiting for their bus on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when they were first verbally accosted by a group of Black Hebrew Israelites and then were approached by Native American protestor Nathan Phillips, who began chanting and beating a drum in Sandmann’s face.
The Post, in other words, got the story backwards (I wonder if the MAGA hat had anything to do with that?)
Legal action commenced
Now Sandmann’s family is bringing a libel suit against the Post alleging that it “wrongfully targeted and bullied Nicholas because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap on a school field trip.”
The complaint accuses the Post of being “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.” Accordingly, they are seeking compensatory and punitive damages in the amount of $250 million.
Sandmann’s chances
Attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has listed Sandmann’s chances as “reasonable.” “I think they have a reasonable case, I mean the world was guilty of libel,” he said. “These poor kids seemed to be doing exactly the right thing, and then suddenly because they are thought to be white, privileged kids, suddenly everyone’s ganging up on them.”
Dershowitz, however, thinks that Sandmann and his attorneys might run into trouble with the amount of money for which they are asking. “I’d be interested to see how the case unfolds,” he said. “I mean they’re asking for a lot of money, I don’t think that’s going to be taken too seriously. But I do think that they have a significant case and it will be interesting to see how the Post defends against their reporting in the case.”
The Post, which later ran the self-serving headline, “A viral story spread. The mainstream media rushed to keep up. The Trump Internet pounced,” says it plans to mount a “vigorous” defense.
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