On Wednesday, attorneys for Nicholas Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School student who was targeted by the media after his encounter with Native American activist Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, announced they are filing a $275 million lawsuit against NBCUniversal, alleging “NBCUniversal created a false narrative by portraying the ‘confrontation’ as a ‘hate crime’ committed by Nicholas.”
According to The Washington Times, the suit states that NBCUniversal was motivated by its “anti-Trump agenda,” adding that Sandmann was “an easy target for NBCUniversal to advance its anti-Trump agenda because he was a 16-year-old white, Catholic student who had attended the Right to Life March that day and was wearing a MAGA cap at the time of the incident which he had purchased earlier in the day as a souvenir.” The suit also states that NBCUniversal, by means of NBC and MSNBC, “unleashed its vast corporate wealth, influence, and power against Nicholas to falsely attack him despite the fact that at the time, he was a 16-year-old high school student.”
The lawsuit asserts, “Headlines run online by NBCUniversal outlets about the incident included, ‘Nathan Phillips, Native American man harassed by high schoolers, tells his story,’ and ‘Video of teens taunting man at Indigenous Peoples March sparks outrage.’”
Sandmann’s attorneys have already filed a $250 million suit against the Washington Post and another suit against CNN for $275 million. As The Daily Wire reported in mid-February, Sandmann’s lawyers warned when they sued The Washington Post that more suits would be forthcoming. They said in a statement:
Today, Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry filed their first lawsuit on behalf of Nicholas Sandmann against The Washington Post. The lawsuit filed is included below. The suit seeks $250 million in both compensatory and punitive damages. Lin and Todd will continue to bring wrongdoers before the court to seek damages in compensation for the harm so many have done to the Sandmann family. This is only the beginning.
The lawsuit against the Post stated: “In targeting and bullying Nicholas by falsely accusing him of instigating the January 18 incident, 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 Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump (‘the President’) by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.”
The Daily Wire reported in mid-March that Sandmann’s attorneys announced they were suing CNN, with one saying, “Well, what CNN’s tagline is facts first. And what we believe their reporting was in this circumstance was lies first; cover up second, and facts not yet determined by that organization. So the difference between this lawsuit and the other lawsuit that we have filed is that CNN is a very significant media organization with a much broader reach than say The Washington Post. It has a Twitter followers of 41 million people. It published four videos. Nine online articles that were tweeted out. So that’s millions and millions and millions of repetitions of the lies and falsehoods that CNN spread.”