MAGA teen who faced off with Native American elder in viral video sues CNN for $275 million

Mar 13, 2019

Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School student who made headlines for facing off with a Native American Elder during a rally outside the Lincoln Memorial, is planning for a big payback.

The teen who went viral in January is reportedly suing CNN alleging that the outlet contributed to negative coverage of the confrontation.

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The $275 million lawsuit was filed on Tuesday, with Sandmann’s team claiming that CNN’s coverage was inflammatory and caused the student harm.

“CNN’s agenda-driven fiction about Nicholas and the January 18 incident was not only false and defamatory, it created an extremely dangerous situation by knowingly triggering the outrage of its audience and unleashing that outrage,” his lawyer L. Lin Wood wrote in the suit obtained by WCPO.

This suit comes just one month after Sandmann sued The Washington Post for $250 million for defamation of character.

Lawyers for the teen are arguing that the newspaper and the cable news outlet created a false narrative by accusing the Kentucky student of being racist and instigating a confrontation with the man.

The first suit alleges that the Post “wrongfully targeted and bullied” Sandmann in an effort to justify a bias against Donald Trump.

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The video that went viral in January shows 16-year-old Sandmann standing face-to-face with Native American activist Nathan Phillips as he beat a drum.

Sandmann claims he was bombarded with negative comments and hateful threats after the media firestorm and public outrage.

Today Show host Savannah Guthrie sat down for the first interview with Sandmann on January 23 to get the teen’s side of the fury that erupted. “Do you feel from this experience that you owe anybody an apology?” Guthrie asks Sandmann. “Do you see your own fault in any way?”

“As far as standing there, I had every right to do so. I don’t – I – my position is that I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips. I respect him. I’d like to talk to him. I mean – in hindsight I wish we could have walked away and avoided the whole thing.”