Nicholas Sandmann reaches settlement with NBC in Covington defamation lawsuit!
CINCINNATI, Ohio (PNN) - December 18, 2021 - Nicholas Sandmann settled his defamation lawsuit Friday with NBC-Universal.
Media had lambasted the Covington Catholic High School student from Kentucky, now 19, over a confrontation at the 2019 March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Following the 2019 incident in Washington, D.C., many media outlets and Democrat politicians demonized Sandmann for a confrontation with a Native American elder at the Lincoln Memorial following the march.
Sandmann was recorded on video wearing one of President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign hats while smiling at the activist, Nathan Phillips, while Phillips beat a ceremonial drum and chanted at him in close proximity.
Several media reports at the time claimed the incident was racially charged on the part of the white teenager, which Sandmann and other witnesses disputed.
People have judged Sandmann “based off one expression, which I wasn’t smirking, but people have assumed that’s what I was doing,” he said in a 2019 interview with NBC News anchor Savannah Guthrie.
Nearby, members of the Black Hebrew Israelites group were shouting slurs at him and his classmates, he added.
“I heard them call us incest kids, bigots, racists,” Sandmann said.
His filing against NBC-Universal and MSNBC reportedly asked for $275 million in damages.
CNN and Washington Post both settled defamation lawsuits from Sandmann in 2020 for undisclosed amounts.
The lawsuit against CNN sought damages for “emotional distress Nicholas and his family suffered” in the fallout of the network’s reporting.
Law school professor William Jacobson told Fox News at the time that CNN agreeing to settle is a “rare example of a ‘little guy’ being able to stand up to a media behemoth”, and estimated the deal was worth at least seven figures.
In 2020, Sandmann attorney Todd McMurtry said that lawsuits against “as many as 13 other defendants will be filed,” including ABC, CBS, The Guardian, HuffPost, NPR, Slate, The Hill, and Gannett, which owns the Cincinnati Enquirer, as well as other small outlets.
After Illinois teenager Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of homicide charges in the shooting deaths of two Kenosha, Wisconsin, rioters Nov. 19 amid similar media attacks, Sandmann said the teenager’s experiences seemed similar to his and that as of November, he had six pending lawsuits against other media outlets.
“It’s terrible - as a 17-year-old in Kyle’s case and mine 16, your mind is still developing,” he said, “so to deal with an overload of stress where you have this feeling that half of the country - hundreds of millions of people - hate you for something that you are innocent of, but how you are painted can do a lot to you mentally.”
“It takes a very strong will to be able to resist that and keep a level head,” he added. “I think that Kyle Rittenhouse is dealing with that right now.”
