Judge’s ruling marks latest setback for CNN in defamation trial brought by Navy veteran
CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s jabs at Fox News could come back to bite the network in an upcoming defamation trial over a segment in which Tapper’s show falsely accused a Navy veteran of preying on Afghan nationals fleeing the country after the Taliban’s takeover in 2021.
A judge in Florida ruled Thursday in favor of Zachary Young, who accuses Tapper and CNN of falsely portraying him as an “illegal profiteer” of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, allowing Young to use Tapper’s disparagement of Fox News in November 2023 at trial. Back then, Tapper referred to Fox News as a “cancer on the democracy we have” and accused Fox News of abrogating its “grave responsibility” to be “fair and honest” in its news coverage. The judge’s ruling was first reported by Law and Crime.
Young, who is suing CNN for $1 billion in damages, sought to include Tapper’s statements at trial to show that the veteran newsman and CNN were keenly aware of the obligation to present fair and accurate information to viewers. He says the November 2021 news segment damaged his reputation and ruined his contracting company, Nemex Enterprises.
Judge William Henry, who is presiding over the case in Florida’s 14th Judicial Circuit, has ruled in favor of Young in other requests to present text messages that Young says will show that CNN employees had an agenda to smear him as a war profiteer.
In one text exchange, CNN national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, the lead reporter on the Tapper segment, told colleagues he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker.” CNN senior editor Fuzz Hogan called Young “a shit,” according to messages turned over during discovery in the case.
CNN didn’t return a request for comment.
The case threatens to be another embarrassing stumble for CNN, which calls itself “the most trusted name in news.” The network settled with 16-year-old Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann in 2020 for falsely portraying him as the aggressor in a face-to-face standoff with 65-year-old activist Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial in 2019.
The CNN trial is slated to start later this month, mere weeks after ABC News settled with Donald Trump for $15 million over ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos’s statements that Trump was a rapist.
Tapper, who served as press secretary for former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D., Pa.) in the 1990s, worked at ABC News before joining CNN.