Tag: lawsuits

Hasan Piker Files $72.5 Million Lawsuit Against CNN’s Scott Jennings for Allegedly Portraying Him as Calling for Lynching Black Americans

Far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker filed a $72.5 million defamation lawsuit against CNN commentator Scott Jennings in federal court on Tuesday, accusing the pundit of airing a manipulated video and falsely portraying him as advocating the lynching of Black Americans.

The 38-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, centers on an August 11 episode of Salem Media’s The Scott Jennings Show and social media posts with clips.

Jennings played an edited clip of Piker and told listeners that the streamer was “out there calling for Black voters to be lynched” and referenced “the Piker plan of returning our country to lynchings.”

In another post, he wrote that Abdul El-Sayed’s “best pal and campaign partner says the USA should resume lynchings against black people.”

Piker is seeking at least $27.5 million in compensatory damages, $45 million in punitive damages, and a jury trial.

The footage comes from a 2024 livestream, during which Piker reacted to a debate between two Black political commentators on criminal justice policy.

According to the complaint, Piker was sarcastically mocking a conservative participant who had criticized progressive prosecutors and “woke DAs.”

Laughing, Piker said something to the effect of “He said, ‘We need more Klansmen, okay? Can we go back to a better time when lynchings were happening? This is what I like as a Black man. Also, there’s no real racism in America.’”

The lawsuit alleges that the version Jennings aired was a roughly 42-second compilation drawn from multiple streams, cropped and rearranged to omit the words “He said” and the surrounding sarcasm that made clear Piker was attributing the remarks to someone else rather than endorsing them.

Jennings then added a caption presenting the line as a direct quote from Piker: “LET’S GO BACK TO A BETTER TIME WHEN LYNCHINGS WERE HAPPENING.”

The complaint states that Jennings “did not merely mischaracterize something Mr. Piker said. He took a false, fabricated, and manipulated video of Mr. Piker, added a made-up quotation that Mr. Piker never uttered, and then made accusations that went beyond even what the manipulated footage purported to show.”

Piker’s attorneys argue that the statements were presented as factual assertions about what he said rather than rhetorical commentary, and that Jennings ignored a prior request for a retraction.

The suit alleges defamation per se, defamation by implication, and false light, arguing that the accusations damaged Piker’s reputation, threatened his streaming income and sponsorships, and caused emotional distress.

As of Tuesday evening, Jennings had not publicly responded to the lawsuit. He had also not deleted the posts.

Keep reading

Texas AG Ken Paxton Sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman for Lying to Users and Harming Texans Including Children

The great Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued OPenAI and Sam Altman on Friday for lying to and misleading Texans on safety concerns.

The suit was filed on Friday October 23, 2026, in Collin County district court. The suit alleges OpenAI misled consumers about ChatGPT’s safety and failed to protect Texans — including children — from harmful AI outputs

According to the Woodlands Online the suit asserts:
** Misrepresented safety and reliability of ChatGPT while omitting significant risks

** Failed to implement adequate guardrails, allowing harmful outputs such as encouragement of self-harm, violence, or addiction

** Rushed products to market for profit, disregarding internal safety warnings

** Collected minors’ data without parental oversight and allegedly contributed to incidents like AI-assisted mass shootings

The lawsuit invokes Texas deceptive trade practices act and the securing children online through parental empowerment act.

Civil penalties could reach $10,000 per violation.

Keep reading

DOJ Moves to Preemptively Block Certification of Alaska Senate Race

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking to preemptively block certification of the Alaska U.S. Senate contest should the state certify “electoral results tainted by the inclusion” of liberal activist Daniel J. Sullivan, who is being propped up by left-wing Democrats due to sharing the same name as incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.

The two-term senator is seeking a third term in office and is one of four candidates in the race, along with former Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola, the liberal Sullivan, and Gerald Heikes.

The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Alaska on October 22, provides a lengthy list of exhibits detailing the extent of which left-wing interests have sought to confuse voters with identical names and signage. The Alaska Division of Elections initially kicked the liberal activist off the ballot, but his candidacy was reinstated by the Alaska Supreme Court.

The liberal activist Sullivan told the New York Times he voted for the Democrat nominee in the last three presidential elections and did not vote for the senator in his previous two campaigns. He said he backed Peltola in her 2022 and 2024 U.S. House bids and has donated to her and other Democrats, according to previous Breitbart News reporting.

Alaska uses a controversial ranked-choice voting process, in which voters are asked to rank their choices in each contest on the state’s ballot. Even small shifts in preference could play a role in the eventual winner of the race.

In addition to the state, the suit names Alaska Elections Division Director Carol Beecher, the state’s election boards, and the state Ballot Counting Review Board as defendants, CNBC reported on the matter.

“The United States accordingly brings this lawsuit to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska,” the filing reads.

Keep reading

Lawsuit challenges Cincinnati over BLM mural, equal access to streets

A federal lawsuit is challenging Cincinnati’s decision to allow a Black Lives Matter street mural, with the plaintiff arguing other viewpoints deserve the same opportunity to paint city streets.

Chris Langdon filed the lawsuit in federal court just days before the Black Lives Matter mural was refurbished for the BLINK festival. The mural was painted on Plum Street in 2020.

Langdon lives in Winter Park, Florida. He said the First Amendment gives him the same right to express his views on Cincinnati streets as anyone else.

“I think the First Amendment is important. one group to use the city streets, you have to allow all groups to use it, all points of view,” Langdon said.

What Langdon wants to paint

Langdon said he wants to paint a mural on a Cincinnati city street using religious figures standing arm in arm with the caption “Peace & Religious Tolerance.” He wants it to include Jesus, Buddha, the Prophet Muhammad and Moses.

“I put in my lawsuit things like all lives matter, brown lives matter, yellow lives matter. I don’t think you can just make a statement just for one race,” Langdon said.

Fox19 legal analyst Mark Krumbein said the lawsuit is not a novel concept.

“It’s an interesting lawsuit and its a concept that has come up before and basically an individual is saying he wants to do the same thing that someone else is done and in this case, Black Lives Matter has painted murals on the sidewalk, different symbols, so he wants to do that himself,” Krumbein said.

Krumbein compared the issue to past disputes over religious displays.

“The same issues applies like when they have a Christmas tree on Fountain Square and you know like well, can I have my, this religious, that religion and can I do this?” Krumbein said.

Lawsuit seeks damages

Langdon’s lawsuit also includes $10,000 in damages from the mayor and $10,000 from the city.

Mayor Aftab Pureval released a statement to FOX19 saying: “This looks to me like a frivolous lawsuit filed by someone offended by racial inclusion. I’m not sorry for supporting the Black Lives Matter mural. It is a beautiful representation of our City’s speech and values. It’s not going anywhere.”

Langdon said he has sued other cities over the same issue.

“So anybody has the right to paint the streets and anybody else in America has a right to come and paint. You have the same right to paint the city streets. It doesn’t matter if you’re a resident of Cincinnati or not,” Langdon said.

Langdon said if the city doesn’t settle his lawsuit, he hopes it makes its way all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The Black Lives Matter mural was privately funded when it was painted in 2020. In 2021, City Council approved an ordinance transferring and appropriating $125,000 from city funds to restore it.

Keep reading

Groups Sue DHS, Alleging Effort To Compile Voter Data Is Illegal

Federal officials obtaining and compiling data on voters as part of an effort to combat voter fraud is illegal, three organizations said in an Oct. 15 lawsuit.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) compilation of the data from nearly every state violates the Privacy Act, which only lets agencies maintain information that is relevant and necessary for authorized purposes, the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the League of United Latin American Citizens said in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia.

“Congress created DHS to prevent terrorism, secure the border, and address other specified threats – not to conduct a voter-fraud dragnet centered on the private voting information of millions of Americans and records reflecting the exercise of constitutional rights essential to democracy,” the plaintiffs said.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Federal law requires states to keep lists of registered voters. The lists always have the names of all registered voters, and usually include other details such as their addresses, sex, date of birth, and partial or complete Social Security number.

Certain individuals can request the data from states, but there are restrictions on requesters and other restrictions on disclosure.

For instance, most states do not allow people who obtain the data to disclose Social Security numbers.

The Privacy Act states in part that for information concerning activity protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, agencies can “maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity.”

The Department of Justice has been sharing voter lists it obtained with DHS, according to letters released by the government. DHS has obtained some version of voter registration lists from at least 47 states, according to the lawsuit.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel said in a May legal opinion that the department “has authority to seek statewide voter lists and share them with the Department of Homeland Security as part of its effort to identify individuals who are ineligible to vote.”

The office also said that DHS is “authorized by law to investigate … voter fraud.”

DHS has since been reviewing the data, along with information it purchased from commercial sources, to try to identify people who are not eligible to vote. In litigation filed separately on Thursday, the government said an analysis of the list and federal data showed that more than 20,000 people registered to vote in California are likely noncitizens.

The lawsuit shows that DHS possesses voter files for California and is improperly using them for election administration purposes, the League of Women Voters and the other plaintiffs said in the District of Columbia filing.

They’re asking the court to declare the voter data collection policy violates federal law, enjoin government officials from carrying out the policy, and to order officials to delete information it has collected.

Keep reading

CBS Tried to Trash Trump Again, Now They’re Facing Another Multimillion Suit, This Time from a 15-Year-Old They Trashed

In what appears to have been an attempt made over the summer to impugn President Donald Trump, CBS News published bad information that’s now poised to potentially cost it $20 million in damages.

While covering the vandalism occurring at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool over the summer, CBS News identified a detained 15-year-old Maryland teenager known as simply “JV” as one of the culprits.

But according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, “JV” was not, in fact, responsible for any vandalism.

“He was not arrested for vandalizing it,” the lawsuit states, as reported by Fox News. “He was not accused by law enforcement of vandalizing it.”

According to The Desk, the media-focused news site that first reported the lawsuit story, “JV” was riding an electric dirt bike near the pool on June 20 when he was briefly detained and handcuffed but soon after released without charges.

Despite “JV” being released without charges, CBS News ran a report the following day showing “JV” alongside the actual vandals, according to the lawsuit.

“CBS News broadcast and published a story to a national audience that placed JV’s image alongside the assertion that five people had been arrested for vandalizing and ‘sabotaging’ the Reflecting Pool, thereby falsely portraying JV as one of the perpetrators of a highly publicized federal crime,” the suit states.

Keep reading

NCAA sues Ohio governor over his executive order allowing schools to ignore new eligibility rule

The NCAA filed a federal lawsuit against Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday, three days after he signed an executive order giving the state’s universities the option of allowing athletes who graduated from high school in 2022 to play a fifth year in defiance of the organizations’s new eligibility rules.

NCAA President Charlie Baker said the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Ohio, was an “extraordinary step” designed to prevent DeWine from taking a step that would make it “impossible for all schools to compete on a level playing field.”

Under the order, public and private universities in Ohio can allow the Class of ’22 athletes to play, even though the NCAA’s new guidance excludes those who have already played four seasons. The rule, passed in June, is the subject of multiple court fights.

“This Complaint seeks to halt a misguided attempt to give Ohio colleges and universities an unfair, unprecedented and unwarranted competitive advantage in stadiums and arenas throughout the country,” the introduction to the lawsuit reads. “College sports, like all sports, depend on participants following the rules. (DeWine) is attempting to give Ohio institutions a hall pass to break the rules.”

DeWine’s move was the latest in what has become a daily digest of legal maneuverings that are creating new rules on a state-by-state basis.

In reaction to the governor’s move, the Ohio Supreme Court said it would step in and determine the legality of the executive order. As part of that, it paused an appeals court ruling in a case there that had declared the ’22 athletes ineligible. The court asked both sides to file briefs in the case, in which basketball player Filip Borovićanin is the lead plaintiff, by next Monday.

Baker said the NCAA did not believe the Supreme Court’s order did, in fact, declare those players immediately eligible to compete and said it would submit arguments in that case by Monday.

Keep reading

Trump Admin Sues California Over 20,000 Suspected Ineligible Voters Ahead Of Midterms

The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against California and two election officials, seeking to prevent approximately 20,000 potentially ineligible voters from having their ballots counted in November’s midterm elections until their citizenship status can be verified.

The Justice Department alleges that California is knowingly allowing noncitizens to participate in federal elections, raising concerns about election integrity just weeks before voters head to the polls.

“State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

“If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government,” Blanche added.

According to the lawsuit, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators identified potentially ineligible voters using federal immigration records and information from the Social Security Administration and State Department.

The Justice Department previously sent Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan a password-protected drive containing more than 20,000 voter records, demanding citizenship verification within 48 hours.

Logan responded that his office would follow applicable federal and state election laws while maintaining accurate voter registration records.

The administration is now asking a federal court to prevent ballots associated with those voters from being counted until their eligibility is established.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, condemned the lawsuit, accusing President Donald Trump of attempting to suppress voters ahead of the election.

“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” Newsom said.

Similar federal efforts to identify noncitizens on voter rolls in Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have previously raised questions about the accuracy of government data.

Keep reading

FBI Agents Fired Over Their Roles For Targeting Trump in Classified Documents Case Sue to Get Their Jobs Back

The nine former FBI agents fired for their roles in Jack Smith’s classified documents case are suing the FBI and Director Kash Patel for their jobs back.

The disgruntled agents said they were fired without cause.

FBI Director Kash Patel fired the agents in February 2026.

The former agents argued that they never volunteered to work on the “Plasmic Echo” case, but rather were assigned to it because of their roles in counterintelligence.

NBC News reported:

Nine former FBI employees involved in the classified documents case against President Donald Trump filed suit Thursday against FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche, alleging their firings were “unlawful.”

The group’s suit says they were fired without cause for their work on the case involving Trump, and that the firings appeared to be politically motivated. It noted they were booted while FBI Patel was being criticized by the administration for partying with the U.S. Olympic hockey team.

FBI Special Agent Miles Starr, who was working in a unit called the “Director’s Advisory Team” that was apparently formed to look into Trump’s perceived political enemies, had demanded urgent access to the “Plasmic Echo” case file — the code name for the investigation into the classified documents case — on Feb. 23, the lawsuit says.

That was after video of Patel chugging a beer and “flinging alcohol around the U.S. men’s hockey team’s locker room at the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, began circulating widely on social media and news sites,” the suit says.

The file had the names of the agents who’d worked on the investigation, and they were summarily fired over the next few days without any of the required due process, the suit says.

“Each Plaintiff was provided with a termination letter signed by Director Patel” that falsely claimed that they had exercised “poor judgment and a lack of impartiality in carrying out their duties, leading to the political weaponization of the government,” the suit says.

Keep reading

Judicial Watch Goes to Court to Force Detroit to Release Animal Kill Numbers from Abdul El-Sayed’s ‘Slaughterhouse’ Years

Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit against the City of Detroit to force the release of records on how many dogs and cats were euthanized by Detroit Animal Care and Control while Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed ran the city’s health department.

The lawsuit, Judicial Watch, Inc. v. City of Detroit (No. 26-018170), follows an August 14 FOIA request and an October 7 follow-up that the city never answered.

Judicial Watch is demanding annual euthanasia totals from 2010 through 2025, plus every directive, memorandum, and protocol that Animal Care and Control received from El-Sayed’s office between January 2015 and December 2017.

The organization also wants the numbers after he left, so voters can compare.

As The Gateway Pundit reported in August, El-Sayed’s tenure as executive director and health officer saw nearly 4,680 dogs and cats put down.

In 2015 alone, the facility killed 1,988 dogs and 272 cats.

Former officer Brittany Roberts called the place a “dog slaughterhouse,” describing overcrowded, unsanitary conditions filled with feces, blood, and vomit, animals that were not scanned for microchips, and inadequate care.

Keep reading