Lin Wood, the attorney representing Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann, blasted the Washington Post on Monday over their lame attempt to avoid legal accountability with an Editor’s Note whitewashing their previous coverage of his client.
Sandmann is currently suing the Washington Post for $250 million in compensatory and punitive damages — the same amount that Jeff Bezos purchased the paper for.
In Wood’s statement, he asserted that the Post’s attempt to “whitewash its wrongdoing were untimely, grossly insufficient and did little more than perpetuate the lies it published – lies that will haunt and adversely impact Nicholas for the rest of his life.”
Sandmann, 16, was the main student captured in a viral video after he was confronted by valor-stealing far-left activist Nathan Phillips. The Washington Post and numerous other major media outlets immediately lead a charge to vilify, bully, and harass the students in the video — simply because they were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats. They claimed that the students were harassing the Native American activist, though it would later be proven that it was the other way around.
“Late last Friday evening, 41 days after it launched its false attacks on a minor, the Post published an Editor’s Note and delivered to Nicholas’ lawyers a letter from its General Counsel, Jay Kennedy. With its unlimited financial resources, the Post likely spent tens of thousands of dollars on media defense lawyers to publicly parse and spin its false coverage in an effort to avoid accountability and limit its legal responsibility for its wrongdoing. The Post’s efforts were too little and too late,” a statement from Wood read.
The statement continued on to say that “the Post ignored its own culpability and wrongdoing. Mr. Kennedy’s letter stated that the Post ‘provided accurate coverage.’ It did not and its belated public relations efforts change nothing and fool no one. The Post made no effort to retract and correct the lies it published.”
Wood noted that the Editor’s Note did not “admit its negligent and reckless violations of fundamental journalistic standards documented by its complete failure to investigate the incident at the National Mall before publishing lies about a child.” He also pointed to their own policies and standards that their coverage violated.
“False accusations against an adult destroy a lifetime of accomplishments. False accusations against children forever rob them of their inherent right to define their lives for themselves and force them to suffer a life tainted and damaged by the permanent shadow of the lies,” the statement noted. “Last Friday night the Post made clear that it has learned no lesson and remains willing in the future to falsely attack others to further its political agenda, including false attacks on children.”
Wood asserted that the Post “has now doubled down on its lies,” and therefore they will double down on the truth.
“As Nicholas’s lawyers, we will now double down on truth and aggressively continue our legal efforts to hold the Post accountable and obtain justice for Nicholas in a court of law,” the statement concluded.
