Left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker filed a $72.5 million defamation lawsuit Tuesday against conservative political commentator Scott Jennings, alleging that Jennings falsely told his podcast listeners that Piker advocated for lynchings to resume in the United States.
In an Aug. 11 episode of his podcast, Jennings said Piker is “out there calling for Black voters to be lynched.” The episode included several clips from Piker’s Twitch stream, including one in which Piker appears to call himself a racist and refers to “a better time when lynchings were happening.”
Piker’s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in D.C., said that Jennings took those clips out of context and that Piker had been reacting to a debate between two Black political commentators, one liberal and one conservative. The clips that Jennings showed his audience were “cropped, shortened, and rearranged” to omit the underlying debate and other quotes that would have made it clear Piker was being sarcastic, according to the complaint.
“Mr. Piker was plainly ridiculing the commentator’s position. He was not endorsing it,” the complaint says.
In addition to broadcasting that video on his podcast, Jennings added a caption that made it appear as if “Let’s go back to a better time when lynchings were happening” was a direct quotation from Piker, the lawsuit says.
“These were not expressions of disagreement with Mr. Piker’s politics,” Piker’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “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.”
Piker, who has more than 3 million followers on Twitch, alleges in his complaint that he suffered “injury to his reputation, public humiliation, emotional distress, mental anguish, and damage to his professional interests.” He is seeking $72.5 million in damages.
“You have to remember, this is not just about Scott Jennings, although he certainly messed up,” Piker said on his Twitch stream Tuesday. “This is about truth in the media, okay? I think for far too long we have allowed Republicans to get away with saying whatever they want.”
Jennings did not respond to requests for comment. Daniel Watkins, an attorney for Piker, said in a statement that Jennings has the right to disagree with Piker politically but not to invent what Piker said.
“Scott Jennings accused Hasan Piker of calling for Black Americans to be lynched. That is an extraordinary accusation. And it was a lie,” Watkins said. “… There is something especially disgraceful about exploiting this country’s history of racial terror to destroy another man’s reputation.”
Watkins also noted that Jennings has not retracted or corrected his statements. An X post that Jennings made Aug. 11 — in which he promotes the podcast episode and describes Piker as the “best pal and campaign partner” of Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for the Senate — remains online.
Though Piker has never held elected office, he has long been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump and has been embroiled in political controversy. Republicans have tried to hamstring El-Sayed’s campaign by frequently highlighting his close political relationship with Piker, who has been accused of making inflammatory and antisemitic remarks.
Last year, Piker said he was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers upon returning to the United States from France and questioned at length about his job, his political affiliation, his opinion of Trump and whether he had any connections to terrorist groups.
Scott Nover contributed to this report.
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