Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann announced on Friday that his legal team has settled its $250 million defamation lawsuit with The Washington Post.
“On 2/19/19, I filed $250M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post. Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit,” Sandmann wrote on Twitter. “Thanks to @ToddMcMurtry & @LLinWood for their advocacy. Thanks to my family & millions of you who have stood your ground by supporting me. I still have more to do.”
On 2/19/19, I filed $250M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post. Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit. Thanks to @ToddMcMurtry & @LLinWood for their advocacy. Thanks to my family & millions of you who have stood your ground by supporting me. I still have more to do.
— Nicholas Sandmann (@N1ckSandmann) July 24, 2020
Sandmann added, “We have settled with WAPO and CNN. The fight isn’t over. 2 down. 6 to go. Don’t hold your breath @jack .”
We have settled with WAPO and CNN.
The fight isn’t over. 2 down. 6 to go.
Don’t hold your breath @jack.
— Nicholas Sandmann (@N1ckSandmann) July 24, 2020
The lawsuit centered around false coverage of an interaction that Sandmann had with Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips that portrayed Sandmann as an aggressor.
Kris Coratti, a spokesperson for The Post, said, “We are pleased that we have been able to reach a mutually agreeable resolution of the remaining claims in this lawsuit.”
“Nicholas Sandmann agreed to settle with the Post because the Post was quick to publish the whole truth—through its follow-up coverage and editor’s notes,” Sandmann’s attorney, Todd McMurtry, said in a statement. “The terms of the settlement are confidential.”
The settlement from The Washington Post comes after CNN settled the $275 million lawsuit that it faced from Sandmann back in January.
“CNN agreed Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann,” Fox 19 reported. “The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington.”
“CNN was probably more vicious in its direct attacks on Nicholas than The Washington Post. And CNN goes into millions of individuals’ homes,” Lin Wood told Fox News’ Mark Levin last year. “CNN couldn’t resist the idea that here’s a guy with a young boy, with that Make America Great Again cap on. So they go after him.”
“They really went after Nicholas with the idea that he was part of a mob that was attacking the Black Hebrew Israelites, yelling racist slurs at the Black Hebrew Israelites. Totally false,” Wood continued. “Now you say you’ve seen the tape; if you took the time to look at the full context of what happened that day, Nicholas Sandmann did absolutely nothing wrong. He was, as I’ve said to others, he was the only adult in the room.”
In an interview on Fox News last year, McMurtry told anchor Sandra Smith, “Well, what CNN’s tagline is 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 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.”
“Well, we’ve talked about the impact on Nicholas Sandmann a number of times and it — it is significant,” McMurtry continued. “Nicholas Sandmann was a 16-year-old man who had a perfect reputation. He was loved by his parents, respected at his school, and had many good friends at Covington Catholic High School. So he was a person that was doing very well in life, and due to his strong character, he still is. But nevertheless, his character has now been determined by the lies issued by CNN. So the facts were not first, the lies were.”