Jury: CNN Defamed Navy Vet
Jury finds CNN defamed Navy veteran with segment on Afghan refugees
Story by Dominick Mastrangelo
A jury in Florida on Friday found that CNN defamed a Navy veteran with a report on his business that aired in 2021 and awarded him $5 million damages.
The plaintiff, Zachary Young, sued the network saying it harmed his business by including him in a 2021 segment about contractors who the report suggested were profiteering off Afghan refugees trying to flee the country after the Biden administration pulled U.S. forces out of the country.
The verdict came after more than eight hours of deliberation at a courthouse in Bay County, Fla., where jurors during a multiday trial were shown a string of evidence including depositions from top CNN anchor Jake Tapper and messages between reporter Alex Marquardt and Young before the segment ran.
As part of the verdict, the jury awarded Young $4 million in lost business damages and $1 million in personal damages.
The judge, 14th Judicial Circuit Court Judge William S. Henry, announced that Young and CNN reached a settlement that would be awarded to the Navy veteran before the jury determined a punitive amount. An expert witness had mentioned $150 million as fair punishment for CNN, but the actual amount is undisclosed.
ABC News will pay $15 million in a settlement reached with President-elect Trump in his defamation suit against the network, and anchor George Stephanopoulos will pay an additional $1 million. Trump also has filed a $10 billion with a “B” lawsuit against CBS for it’s “60 Minutes” interview with then candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.
Seems the main stream media’s chickens are coming home, to roost.
Category: Blue Falcons, Legal, Media, Schadenfreude
If you can’t trust the Mainstream Legacy Media, then you are paying attention.
Hack Stone saw another article about this case where someone at CNN said that Zachary Toung had a “punchable face”. Where have we heard that before?
Meanwhile, another “distinguished” member of the Trump Resistance was busted on child porn charges.
https://nypost.com/2025/01/16/media/pulitzer-prize-winning-cartoonist-darrin-bell-arrested-on-child-porn-charges/
Another Leftist/Biden pickup up on child porn charges? Just another Thursday as continues to happen again, and again, and again…
This guy is friends with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttplug.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/college-park-maryland-mayor-charged-56-counts-child/story?id=97587418
Remember, one of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” is to falsely accuse your political opponent of engaging in the wrongful or criminal conduct you have been doing.
Unlike the Dominion-Fox lawsuit, this one’s is and will be swept under the rug by the increasingly irrelevant MSM.
Triple the damages, quadruple the damages!
Squeeze every last penny from those miserable executives and their minions.
(Bonus points if you get the reference. )
They did it with Rudy Giuliani, seems only fair that those found guilty of defamation suffer the same fate.
Better if it were $148mil, too.
Only payable in paper currency.
“Seems the main stream media’s chickens are coming home, to roost.” Yep, they really have eggs on the face and their goose is cooked. Lame Sleaze media better put their false reporting thing on ice, man.
CNN tried to reach a settlement out of court, but young refused. They should have been forced to pay more than $15 million, but at least they have a judgement against them.
Once the wrongly convicted J6 people are freed, I hope they file a class action lawsuit against all the MSM who lied in their reporting.
All of them need to be litigated against until they’re forced to close down permanently.
I second that!
There is no judgment against the defendants. The settlement precludes entry of judgment
on the jury’s partial verdict
I would like to congratulate CNN as a news network for having lower viewership than the Food Network. Keep at it and you’ll likely have fewer viewers than those late night infomercials.
The settlement occurred during the punitive damage phase of the trial, as the jury had found punitive damages were warranted. The testimony on how many millions were sufficient to punish CNN and the individual defendants was about to begin. As the punitive damages could not be paid by CNN’s insurers, CNN’s management decided it was time to play Let’s Make a Deal and get out the big checkbook.
They should have led with this and avoided the embarrassment. And legal fees.
I don’t think Trump will bargain with CBS though- it’s not about the money with him.
That’s really too bad. I’m sure the legal minds in the room made the right call to settle, but it would have been interesting to see how close to a billion dollars in punitive damages the Florida jury would have gotten.
This is way smaller than what the FAT girls counting D ballets all night on video got,
Pay the man!
At least a Bay County jury (My county) stepped up and did their job. Too bad they didn’t get to assign punitive damages before a deal was made.
Just proves not everything in Florida starts with Florduh Man…..
Mike
USAF Retired
CNN said in a statement “we remain proud of our journalists and are 100% committed to strong, fearless and fair-minded reporting at CNN, though we will of course take what useful lessons we can from this case.”
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!