According to his legal team, CNN could be on the hood for up to a billion dollars in defamation damages over what it allegedly said, on Jake Tapper’s show, about U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young and his company, Nemex Enterprises, when he tried to help people flee Afghanistan when the United States fled the country and abandoned its allies in 2021.
This bad news for CNN comes as it prepared for the CNN presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, during which Jake Tapper, whose show is the one at issue in the defamation suit, will be one of the moderators. His fellow CNN anchor Dana Bash will be the other debate moderator.
In any case, in June of this year, an appellate court in Florida affirmed that Mr. Young and his company could seek punitive damages for going after CNN for the 2021 Afghanistan story. Mr. Young alleges that CNN, in reporting on his company’s efforts to help people flee, improperly suggested that he was acting as an illegal profiteer.
In the ruling, Judge L. Clayton Roberts noted that, for the defamation case to be successful, CNN must have acted with “actual malice,” which means either knowing that the statement is false or with reckless disregard of the possibility that it could be false. Here, the court found Mr. Young had shown that. “Young sufficiently proffered evidence of actual malice, express malice, and a level of conduct outrageous enough to open the door for him to seek punitive damages,” Judge Roberts wrote.
Explaining why actual malice was shown, the court noted that internal CNN messages showed vicious commentary about Mr. Young, with CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt, the “primary reporter” in the story, saying he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker” and that the story would be Young’s “funeral.” CNN editor Matthew Philips, responding to the line about nailing Young, said, “gonna hold you to that cowboy!”
Then, in a filing submitted by Freedman, a message from a CNN editor was revealed to say, “Digital decided not to publish a digital version from Alex. They told me it was bc we could not answer the question is this a scam.” Another read, “It’s not clear to me if everyone is being ripped off or if some people pay up and get out. And that’s pretty crucial! . . . If he doesn’t know the answer to that fundamental question I’d say we really need to pause this until we find out.” One more described the story as “full of holes like Swiss cheese.”
So, since the actual malice was shown, Mr. Young can recover actual and punitive damages. Speaking to Newsbusters about what that means, Vel Freedman, Young’s lawyer, said that CNN could be on the hook for $40-60 million in economic opportunity Mr. Young lost because of CNN, up to $600 million if a jury awards him emotional damages, and punitive damages that could push the total amount up to $1 billion.
In the segment at issue in the case, Mr. Tapper said, “In our world today, the U.S. government, the Biden administration says that as of last week it had assisted in the departure of at least 377 U.S. citizens and 279 lawful permanent residents of the U.S. from Afghanistan since August 31st. ”
He continued, “Still, many Afghans, Afghans who desperately want to flee Taliban rule and Afghans who say their lives are at stake, they remain behind. As CNN’s Alex Marquardt has discovered, Afghans trying to get out of the country, face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.”
Watch that segment here:
"*" indicates required fields