Political streamer Hasan Piker has sued CNN commentator Scott Jennings for $72.5 million, saying Jennings told a national audience that Piker was “out there calling for Black voters to be lynched” by playing a video edited to say so. The suit was filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
The words at the center of it concern the most documented form of terror used against Black Americans. The Equal Justice Initiative has recorded more than 4,000 racial terror lynchings in the United States between Reconstruction and 1950. Piker’s complaint says the sentence Jennings attached to him was never spoken.
On the Aug. 11 episode of “The Scott Jennings Show,” Jennings aired a 42-second clip stitched together from three of Piker’s 2024 Twitch broadcasts, with a caption that read: “Let’s go back to a better time when lynchings were happening.” Jennings then posted on X: “Abdul El-Sayed’s best pal and campaign partner says the USA should resume lynchings against Black people.” El-Sayed is the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan. The post reached about 2.6 million views, according to the Daily Beast.
According to the complaint, Piker was mocking a conservative Black commentator who had blamed “woke DAs” for harming Black Americans. Piker, the suit says, “mocked him by sarcastically portraying that comment as nostalgia for an era before the civil rights movement.” The edited clip, it says, “omits key words and moments.” In the complaint’s words, Jennings “took a false, fabricated, and manipulated video of Mr. Piker, added a made-up quotation that Mr. Piker never uttered.”
Snopes fact-checked the claim on Aug. 14 and found that Piker’s remarks about lynchings were sarcastic reactions, not advocacy. Piker’s lawyers sent a formal retraction demand on Aug. 31. The suit says Jennings never retracted or corrected the claim. The Daily Beast reported that Piker’s legal team includes Daniel Watkins, who worked on Dominion’s successful case against Fox News.
Piker is seeking at least $27.5 million in compensatory damages and $45 million in punitive damages. The suit alleges defamation per se, defamation by implication and false light. These are allegations in a complaint; none has been tested in court. None of the coverage reviewed includes a response from Jennings or CNN.
The case also shows how lynching gets used in political fights. A claim that a candidate’s ally wants Black voters lynched spreads fast because the history is real and recent in family memory. Whether the claim was true is now a question for a judge. Black readers who saw the clip were being asked to believe it.
The case is Piker v. Jennings. No hearing date has been reported.
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