Piker seeks $72.5m from Jennings

Hasan Piker filed a defamation complaint on Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia seeking $72.5 million from Scott Jennings. The plaintiff claims the conservative commentator portrayed him as a violent racist who endorsed the lynching of Black people. Piker is a California-based streamer and socialist commentator, while Jennings is a CNN political analyst who hosts the Scott Jennings Show.

The dispute centers on a podcast episode and a social media post from August 2024. Jennings told listeners that Piker had a plan to return the country to lynchings. He later posted on X that Piker said the United States should resume lynchings against Black people. The lawsuit argues that Jennings manipulated a 42-second video to strip out context that showed Piker was mocking a guest's extreme position.

The original broadcast occurred in August 2024. During that show, Piker was responding to a Black commentator who suggested that woke district attorneys harmed Black Americans. Piker summarized the guest's stance by saying, “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.’” The court filing states that Piker was plainly ridiculing the position, not endorsing it.

Jennings played a cropped and rearranged version of that clip on his podcast on August 11. The lawsuit claims the edited audio removed the words “he said” and other cues indicating sarcasm. Jennings also added a caption presented as a direct quote from Piker: “Let's go back to a better time when lynchings were happening.” The complaint states that Piker never uttered those words in the original broadcast or the edited video.

The filing notes that Jennings was publicly running to become Donald Trump's White House press secretary at the time of the podcast. The plaintiff argues this provided Jennings with an additional reason to attack a prominent left-wing figure whom the President had previously criticized. Jennings linked to the video in an August 11 post on X where he referenced Piker's support for Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for a US Senate seat in Michigan.

Piker is requesting a jury trial and is seeking $27.5 million in compensatory damages and $45 million in punitive damages. Jennings has not commented publicly on the lawsuit. The Guardian has contacted Jennings for comment.

The case is scheduled for review in the District of Columbia federal court. Both parties will be required to respond to the complaint as part of the standard litigation process.