Betsy Woodruff writes in the Daily Beast that Glenn Beck who is “one of Ted Cruz’s most high profile surrogates,” could end up becoming “a rolling PR nightmare” for Cruz when Beck “heads to court this summer for allegedly defaming a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing.”
[Glenn Beck] currently faces a defamation lawsuit—because he doubled and tripled down on charges that a victim of a terrorist attack was actually the real terrorist.
And now, previously unnoticed court filings show his defamation lawsuit might get exciting—and just as the presidential race hits a boiling point. Filings also show that the mediation process, which could have resulted in a settlement, has been terminated.
[…]
The facts of the case are, well, not that surprising if you know anything about Glenn Beck. In the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing terrorist attack that left six people dead, Beck claimed that one of the victims—Saudi national Abdulrahman Alharbi, who was injured in the attack—was actually in on it.
“You know who the Saudi is?” Beck confidently proclaimed in one broadcast a few weeks after the attacks. “He’s the money man. He’s the guy who paid for it.”
Beck also urged his listeners to alert their congressmen about the matter.
[…]
The problem for Beck? Not every person from Saudi Arabia is a participant in a terrorist plot. Authorities investigated Alharbi and subsequently cleared him of any involvement—but it was not lightning-fast enough to keep Beck from telling his millions-strong audience that Alharbi was a crypto-terrorist.
Woodruff also explains the extent of Beck’s close association with the Cruz campaign:
Beck and Cruz have campaigned side-by-side across the early primary states. Beck accompanied Cruz for the last few days of the Iowa caucuses, where Cruz snagged a game-changing win.
During their Iowa swing together, Cruz could barely control his affection for Beck.
“What an extraordinary, visionary, passionate thinker,” he gushed at one Iowa stop.
In a radio broadcast earlier this month, Beck complained that he has spent a lot of money paying his own way to campaign for Cruz.
“This has cost me about $300,000 to go on the road for as long as I have,” he said, according to the Christian Post reported. “$300,000 out of my pocket. Those are not donations. This is out of what I’ve personally lost because I’m not on the job, so that’s what it’s cost me by not being at the facilities in Dallas. We’ve lost $300,000.”
Beck also stumped for the senator in Arizona and Utah. In the lead-up to that trip, he told listeners that they needed to campaign for the senator because we may be facing divine judgment.
“Ezekiel talks about these times and says basically everyone in their own way, you are a watchman on the tower, you are a watchman at the gate,” he said. And the blood of the people who could have been saved—now think of this—because we’re talking about the rights of all mankind. If America goes down—this isn’t hyperbole any more, this isn’t like a famous Reagan speech that he gave—this is real.”
Read the rest here.
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