‘INTENTIONAL AND RECKLESS’

Scott Jennings Sued Over Unhinged Attack on Influencer

The conservative commentator refused to retract a false statement, the multi-million-dollar suit claims.

Progressive Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has filed a $72.5 million defamation suit against conservative commentator Scott Jennings, claiming he falsely said Piker supported lynching Black people.

Piker, 35, threatened the suit two months ago following an Aug. 11 episode of The Scott Jennings Show, in which the MAGA host shared a clip of what he claimed was Piker saying that “the USA should resume lynchings against Black people.”

Piker subsequently provided context for his words, which came during an October 2024 Twitch broadcast in which he was reacting to a debate between conservative and liberal Black commentators. The conservative commentator’s criticism of “woke DAs” prompted Piker to sarcastically suggest that the debater would like to go back to the era of lynchings.

“He said, ‘We need more Klansmen, OK? Can we go back to a better time when lynchings were happening?’” Piker mimicked. “‘This is what I like as a Black man. Also, there’s no real racism in America.’ My man said, ‘woke DAs,’ dude. What are you saying?”

According to Piker’s 38-page suit filed in the District of Columbia, Jennings did not provide this relevant information when he played Piker’s comments on his show. The words “he said” at the beginning were removed, as was Piker’s laugh, which shows he was mocking the debater, the suit claims.

“Mr. Jennings did not merely mischaracterize something Mr. Piker said,” the complaint reads. “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.”

“These were not expressions of disagreement with Mr. Piker’s politics,” it goes on. “Nor were they rhetorical characterizations of an admittedly controversial commentator. They were factual assertions about what Mr. Piker had said and advocated in his work. Each statement was demonstrably false.”

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A Snopes review of Jennings’ video also found that he falsely portrayed Piker’s comments.

“A full review of Piker’s unedited remarks confirms Jennings falsely claimed Piker said he was in favor of bringing back lynchings,” the fact-checking site wrote. “In the original stream, Piker’s remarks on lynchings were sarcastic reactions to a user’s chat comment and opinions expressed by someone else in a separate video.”

And yet Jennings, 49, refused to issue a retraction, Piker’s suit claims. His X post about Piker has received about 2.6 million views as of Tuesday.

Jennings, who is among the candidates to replace the short-lived White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.

On Tuesday, Piker drew attention to his lawsuit by responding to an Oct. 22 X post in which Texas Sen. Ted Cruz repeated Jennings’ false claim.

“Hey ted you seen this?” he wrote, attaching a screenshot of an article about the suit.

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Piker told Status back in August, “This kind of defamation is completely unacceptable.”

“It’s exactly how normal people perceive mainstream media to operate, and it’s a real crisis of credibility,” he added. “I think someone has to push back against it at some point.”

Piker’s suit, which requests $27.5 million in compensatory damages, $45 million in punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees, says Jennings caused reputational harm and negatively affected his ability to earn a living.

Piker is represented by Washington, D.C.-based First Amendment-centric law firm Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch. One of Piker’s attorneys, Daniel Watkins, was on the Clare Locke legal team representing Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against Fox News, which settled for $787.5 million.

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