On Monday, Mohamed Mohamed, father of Ahmed Mohamed, better known as “clock boy,” sued Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro, Fox News, and Glenn Beck, among others, for defamation. On September 14, 2015, then-13-year-old Ahmed Mohamed famously brought a device to school in Irving, Texas claiming that he had “built” a clock; the clock looked suspiciously like an explosive device, and so school authorities took him out of class and called the police. The police temporarily held Mohamed, worried that he had constructed what they called a “hoax bomb,” before releasing him, but his story became a cause celebre due to charges of Islamophobia; President Obama asked Mohamed to bring his clock to the White House.
Now, Ahmed’s father is suing multiple media companies and personalities for defamation, including The Blaze, Glenn Beck, Center for Security Policy, Fox Television Stations, LLC, Ben Ferguson, and Beth Van Duyne, as well as Shapiro.
On October 19, 2015, Shapiro appeared on Fox News’ The Kelly File, where he stated that the entire situation was “a hoax, this was a setup and that President Obama fell for it because it confirms a couple of his pre-stated biases against police and against people who he perceives to be Islamophobic.” Shapiro added that Obama was “constantly shooting first and asking questions later” with regard to the police, and stated that “the story didn’t hold water from the beginning. Within the first forty-eight hours it was clear that this was a bit of a set-up and it was clear that the story didn’t hold together.” Shapiro theorized that Mohamed “took the guts out of an old clock, you can see people do it on YouTube. He literally took the guts out of an old clock, the wiring, and he put it inside of a pencil box and proceeded to bring that into the school and this is not the first family incident that has been like this. His sister had an incident in 2009 that was somewhat similar.” Shapiro was referring to a report from Breitbart News that stated that “the sister of the boy who brought a suspected hoax-bomb to his Texas high school said she was suspended from a school in a prior bomb scare.”
The lawsuit demands an apology from Shapiro, Fox News, and other commentators.
This is not the Mohamed family’s only ongoing lawsuit; they’ve also sued the city of Irving and the school district for some $15 million and apologies.