MAGA teen settles WaPo defamation suit
The young man in a MAGA hat thrust into Washington’s political wars last year has walked away with a victory. A very substantial one.
Nicholas Sandmann tweeted Friday he reached a settlement in his $250 million defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post — on his 18th birthday. Nobody divulged the payout.
“Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit. … Thanks to my family & millions of you who have stood your ground by supporting me. I still have more to do,” Sandmann stated in a tweet. The “more to do” are similar lawsuits against Gannett, ABC, CBS, the New York Times and Rolling Stone, the Washington Post reported.
The Post also reported spokeswoman Kris Coratti as saying: “We are pleased that we have been able to reach a mutually agreeable resolution of the remaining claims of the lawsuit.” Executive Editor Martin Baron declined to comment.
CNN reportedly settled with the teen in January, according to multiple reports. That was also a multimillion-dollar lawsuit where the outcome was not made public.
As a 16-year-old, Sandmann was on a field trip to D.C. with his class from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky when he was taped wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat after an anti-abortion rally where he was falsely accused of getting into a racially charged confrontation with a Native American activist.
Video later showed it was Sandmann and classmates who were being harassed. The lawsuit against the Post, the paper reported, was allowed to proceed because initial reporting stated the teen had “blocked” the activist not allowing him to “retreat,” the Post added.
Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate said the law surrounding defamation needs to change, suggesting newspapers should be given a week to look at the facts and apologize if they are wrong.
“This case is just an example of the way the system is failing with highly politicized stories,” he said. “You’ve got to take a step back because there is a problem with how we handle defamation in this country.”
Silverglate told the Herald he reads multiple newspapers daily — including the Herald — to find balance.
“Newspapers tend to take one side or the other. In order to get a reasonable picture of what happened, you have to read one newspaper on the left, one on the right,” he added.
Sandmann and his pals were thrust into the eye of the political storm that cold January day in 2019. It all transpired in front of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The teen and his classmates were just waiting for their bus following the March For Life event.
“They damaged my character at this age I haven’t been able to develop one,” Sandmann told a TV interviewer last year. “I wasn’t treated like a kid … I was used as an advantage for other people.”