Attorneys for Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann are moving forward with their attempt to hold the media responsible for slander by suing NBC for $275 million.
Sandmann’s Wednesday announcement noted that the student’s legal team was adding NBCUniversal, owner of NBC and MSNBC, to its list of outlets being sued for defamation, Fox News reported.
“NBCUniversal created a false narrative by portraying the ‘confrontation’ as a ‘hate crime’ committed by Nicholas,” the lawsuit reads, 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 teen became the focus of the anti-Trump media in January when the Kentucky schoolboys he was with were accosted in Washington, DC, by a group of radical black activists and then rudely confronted by Native Americans led by activist Nathan Phillips in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
The media immediately reported the encounter as if the schoolboys were “taunting” Phillips and his group of Native Americans and accepted at face value the misleading statements about the incident offered by the native activist. But subsequent videos proved that it was the boys who were actually taunted.
The lawsuit against NBCUniversal becomes the third major lawsuit Sandmann’s legal team has filed against media outlets. Lawsuits have also been filed against the Washington Post for $250 million and CNN for $275 million.
Attorney Todd V. McMurtry noted that more lawsuits are planned and the Sandmann legal team is targeting HBO and the Associated Press as well.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.