Here Are the 50 Celebs, Reporters & Others the Covington Kids' Lawyers Just Officially Targeted
In the wake of a short, out-of-context video put up on Twitter about a confrontation after the Jan. 18 March for Life, pretty much everyone in the establishment media and politics decided to condemn a group of minors from Covington Catholic High School.
And then the facts started coming in.
For the most part, users who criticized the teenagers started running to delete tweets and scale back their remarks, if not retract them completely. Some didn’t, and now they could end up in court.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, over 50 individuals who went after the Covington kids and didn’t retract their statements will potentially find themselves in court after lawyers for the most visible of the students “sent letters to media outlets, individual journalists, celebrities and Catholic organizations as the first step in possible libel and defamation lawsuits.”
The letter from lawyers representing high school junior Nick Sandmann were sent to individuals and organizations ranging “from presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren to actress Alyssa Milano; individual journalists including Maggie Haberman, Ana Cabrera and David Brooks; national media outlets like the The New York Times, CNN, GQ and TMZ; and the dioceses of Covington and Lexington as well as the archdioceses of Louisville and Baltimore.”
“The legal counsel representing Nick and his family, Todd McMurtry and experienced libel and defamation lawyer L. Lin Wood of Atlanta, have said they will seek justice for the harm allegedly done to the teen,” the paper reported.
Others who will likely be included in the suit will be NBC’s Chuck Todd, Newsweek writer/full-time weirdo Kurt Eichenwald, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, MSNBC host Joy Reid and actor/newly minted socialist Jim Carrey.
HBO host Bill Maher, who called Sandmann a “little pr—” who made a “d— move at any age,” is also among the possible targets.
“They know they crossed the line,” McMurtry told the Enquirer. “Do they want 12 people in Kentucky to decide their fate? I don’t think so.”
He added that those on the list will “raise legal defenses and challenges that we’ll have to overcome, but that’s the way it goes.”
While there’s generally a high bar for libel lawsuits in the United States, attorney Robert Barnes, who’s representing some of the students from Covington, previously told Fox News there’s a “unique exception” in this case.
“When there is a defamation and libel of private citizens, particularly minors, then the legal standard goes way down,” Barnes said.
“So you no longer have to prove actual malice or malevolent intent. All you have to prove is that a false statement was made — or in Kentucky, the law is even broader, ‘an unflattering impression given and a person’s impression in a false light’ — and otherwise … that it just be negligent to do so.”
Well, that’s problematic for some media figures, especially when you consider that the rush to get the story first seemed to overshadow the need to check the facts.
Here’s the letter in its entirety:
Preservation Letter by on Scribd
The letters, sent out Friday, ordered subjects to preserve all relevant information regarding the Covington case, including emails and documents.
Here’s the full list:
- The Washington Post
- The New York Times
- Cable News Network, Inc. (CNN)
- The Guardian
- National Public Radio
- TMZ
- Atlantic Media Inc.
- Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.
- Diocese of Covington
- Diocese of Lexington
- Archdiocese of Louisville
- Diocese of Baltimore
- Ana Cabrera
- Sara Sidner
- Erin Burnett
- S.E. Cupp
- Elliot C. McLaughlin
- Amanda Watts
- Emanuella Grinberg
- Michelle Boorstein
- Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
- Antonio Olivo
- Joe Heim
- Michael E. Miller
- Eli Rosenberg
- Isaac Stanley-Becker
- Kristine Phillips
- Sarah Mervosh
- Emily S. Rueb
- Maggie Haberman
- David Brooks
- Shannon Doyne
- Kurt Eichenwald
- Andrea Mitchell
- Savannah Guthrie
- Joy Reid
- Chuck Todd
- Noah Berlatsky
- Elisha Fieldstadt
- Eun Kyung Kim
- HBO
- Bill Maher
- Warner Media
- Conde Nast
- GQ
- Heavy.com
- The Hill
- The Atlantic
- Bustle.com
- Ilhan Omar
- Elizabeth Warren
- Kathy Griffin
- Alyssa Milano
- Jim Carrey
“We want to change the conversation. We don’t want this to happen again,” McMurtry told the Enquirer. “We want to teach people a lesson.”
“There was a rush by the media to believe what it wanted to believe versus what actually happened,” he added.
The lawyers want retractions and apologies from the targets of the letters, arguing that Sandmann’s character had been forever impugned before he even reached adulthood.
“For the mob to just go tear apart a 16-year-old boy is inexcusable,” McMurtry said. “He’ll never be able to get away from this.”
Given the scarcely contained glee the media used in this case, it’s hard to say that this is undeserved. After all, the media took the story of Nathan Phillips — the Native American activist who claimed that Sandmann deliberately blocked him from singing a song at the Lincoln Memorial or some such piffle — at face value and they ran with it and made it fit their narrative.
Now, they could end up paying big time in court.
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