Attorneys representing the Kentucky high school student involved in a confrontation that went viral on social media last month announced Tuesday that they were suing The Washington Post for $250 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
According to Fox News, the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Kentucky, accused The Post of practicing "a modern-day form of McCarthyism" by targeting Nicholas Sandmann and "using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles ... to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president."
Washington Post spokesperson Kris Coratti told Fox News in an email that the paper was "reviewing a copy of the lawsuit, and we plan to mount a vigorous defense."
Sandmann, a junior at Covington Catholic High School, became a target for outrage after a video of him standing face-to-face with a Native American man, Nathan Phillips, while wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat surfaced in January. Sandmann was one of a group of students from Covington attending the anti-abortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., while Phillips was attending the Indigenous Peoples' March on the same day.
Sandmann and the Covington students were initially accused of initiating the confrontation, but other videos and the students' own statements showed that they were verbally accosted by a group of black street preachers who were shouting insults both at them and a group of Native Americans. Sandmann and Phillips have both said they were trying to defuse the situation.
Earlier this month, Sandmann's attorneys sent preservation letters to more than 50 media organizations, celebrities and politicians -- including The Post, The New York Times, CNN, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and actors Alyssa Milano and Jim Carrey -- the first step in possible libel and defamation lawsuits.
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