An attorney for one of the Catholic school students involved in a viral incident with a Native American protester said Nick Sandmann will sue CNN
for $250 million.
The Covington Catholic student was featured in the partially clipped videos aired by major national news outlets, says that CNN engaged in “vicious” direct attacks against him, said his lawyer, L. Lin Wood, in a Fox News interview set to air Sunday.
Wood said that CNN botched its coverage of the events during the Kentucky school’s trip to Washington, D.C., and says his client, who is also suing the Washington Post for $250 million over its reporting on the same incident, deserves compensation.
[Opinion: Covington teen adds CNN to the list of newsrooms he’s suing]
“CNN was probably more vicious in its direct attacks on Nicholas than The Washington Post. And CNN goes into millions of individuals’ homes,” Wood said.
“They really went after Nicholas with the idea that he was part of a mob that was attacking the Black Hebrew Israelites, yelling racist slurs at the Black Hebrew Israelites. Totally false,” he added. “Now you say you’ve seen the tape; if you took the time to look at the full context of what happened that day, Nicholas Sandmann did absolutely nothing wrong. He was, as I’ve said to others, he was the only adult in the room. But you have a situation where CNN couldn’t resist the idea that here’s a guy with a young boy, that Make America Great Again cap on. So they go after him.”
In January, media outlets reported that Sandmann and his classmates had taunted and harassed Native American elder and activist Nathan Phillips as the school group waited by the Lincoln Memorial following the March for Life in Washington, D.C, claims that were not borne out by full video footage of the event. The Washington Post published an editor’s note last month admitting it had made a series of mistakes in its initial report, which was based on social media posts.
