CovCath students sue commentators, ex-governor candidate over Nick Sandmann video tweets

A group of Covington Catholic High School students are suing nine media personalities over tweets and commentary about the incident at the Lincoln Memorial last year.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Kenton County Circuit Court states that 12 students were subjected to "public denunciations, calls for public harassment and public demands of school expulsion."

Separately, The New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC and CNN have all been sued by Nick Sandmann and his family in the wake of the viral video filmed on Jan. 18, 2019.

Sandmann was 16, and also a student at Covington Catholic High School. He and his classmates were in Washington D.C. for the March for Life.

In the video, he was wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and stood face to face with Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist.

Nick Sandmann and Covington Catholic:It's a year later. Where do things stand, and what have we learned?

Sandmann did not shout or say anything to Phillips. On video, he does not appear to engage verbally in any way. However, the images of shouting students surrounding Sandmann and Phillips and the interaction between Native Americans and students cast the whole situation in a political light.

Sandmann is not a party in the lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The media personalities named in the new lawsuit are Jeffrey Shaun King, Kevin Kruse, Reza Aslan, Maggie Haberman, Ana Navarro, Matthew John Dowd, Clara Jeffery, Adam Edelen and Jodi Jacobson.

Edelen lost to current Gov. Andy Beshear in the Democratic primary election in May 2019. 

The tweets

The lawsuit cites the following as tweets posted by the defendants:

• King, a Brooklyn-based activist, said the teens "surrounded and mocked a beloved Native American elder."
• Kruse, an author, tweeted that the students mocked Phillips, taunted woman and "shouted 'it's not rape if you enjoy it.'"
• Azlan, a former CNN commentator, posted a photo of Sandmann and Phillips on Twitter asking if anyone had ever seen a more "punchable" face.
• Haberman, a White House correspondent for the New York Times and an analyst for CNN, tweeted: "Will be interesting to see if anyone is actually expelled, as officials suggest is possible."
• Navarro, a commentator on CNN, Telemundo and The View, posted a tweet describing the video as showing a "Native-American elder taunted by racist MAGA-hat wearing teens."
• Dowd, an ABC News political analyst, tweeted: "Let us not let these kids, their parents and their school off the hook."
• Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, tweeted that videos showed "Covington Catholic kids: making cavemen gestures at BHI; tomahawk chanting at Natives; taunting random women."
• Edelen retweeted an article "with false factual statements (sic)" about the students and called their behavior "outrageous and abhorrent."
• Jacobson, the former editor-in-chief for Rewire.News, is alleged to have written an article containing false statements about the students titled, "White-Washing White Supremacy: Media Rushes to Excuse Covington Catholic Students."

Previously:CovCath dad supports Kentucky doxing bill after 'sensational Twitter attack'

The lawsuit

The civil lawsuit states the students were defamed, harassed, threatened and had their privacy invaded among other charges.

"(The students) were the subject of threats of harm, and other personal attacks on them each individually," the suit states. "They were identified by images and other means."

The complaint says the defendants "knowingly" encouraged the unlawful conduct of other people against the students. The students' lawyers also argue that the public ridicule the students faced was foreseeable – the defendants knew it would happen.

The students are seeking compensatory and punitive damages. The case has been assigned to Kenton County Judge Gregory Bartlett.