Washington Post sued by family of Covington Catholic teenager, President praises lawsuit

The family of the Covington Catholic High School teen from Kentucky who was involved in an encounter with a Native American advocate at the Lincoln Memorial in Jan filed a defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post on Feb 19, seeking $250 million in damages for its coverage of the incident. The suit alleges that The Post “targeted and bullied” 16-year-old Nicholas Sandmann in order to embarrass President Donald Trump. “In a span of three days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child,” reads the complaint. The suit seeks $250 million because Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos paid that amount for the newspaper when he bought it in 2013. In a tweet Feb 20, President Trump voiced support for the lawsuit, quoting a line from the complaint and writing: “Go get them Nick. Fake News!”