Hasan Piker is preparing a defamation lawsuit against conservative commentator Scott Jennings and Salem Media after Jennings falsely claimed the Twitch streamer called for Black voters to be lynched.
The 35-year-old progressive streamer told the media newsletter Status that he and his legal team view Jennings’ comments as defamatory and that filing suit “seems unavoidable.”
Piker said the anticipated action may ultimately expand to include Fox News, where a prominent anchor discussed the same remarks.
The controversy stems from a segment last Tuesday on Jennings’ nationally syndicated Salem Media radio show. Jennings, a CNN commentator, played an edited compilation of clips from Piker as part of what he called an “exploration of the radical socialist streamer.”
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Jennings repeated the charge on social media, urging followers to “listen for yourself.”
The reference was to Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee, whom Jennings linked to Piker.
A detailed review of the audio told a different story, according to Status. A Snopes investigation found that the clip was stitched together from multiple separate streams and stripped of key context. While the individual clips themselves were authentic, the claim built on top of them was not. Piker had been sarcastically riffing on a viewer’s chat message rather than issuing any genuine call for violence.
Piker has described the segment as a serious distortion of his words and is treating the matter as a legal priority.