DW Opinion

Radical Online Streamer Throws $72M Scott Jennings Tantrum Over His Own Offensive 'Jokes'

Hasan Piker's uphill court battle begins with proving what was in Jennings's head.

Mark Goldfeder

Hasan Piker is suing Scott Jennings for $72.5 million over a sentence Piker said out loud, on his own stream, in his own voice. The complaint concedes that on page two and spends the next 36 explaining why it should not count.

On August 11, Jennings played a 42-second clip of Piker on his radio show, told "every Black voter in this country" to listen, and said that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's "best friend" was "out there calling for Black voters to be lynched." His caption read: PIKER: "LET'S GO BACK TO A BETTER TIME WHEN LYNCHINGS WERE HAPPENING." That night he posted the segment to X, writing that Piker "says the USA should resume lynchings against black people." On Tuesday, Piker sued in federal court in Washington for $72.5 million and demanded a jury.

Defamation is a false statement of fact about the plaintiff, published to others, that damages him. Because Piker is a public figure, he also has to prove what the Supreme Court in 1964 named "actual malice," meaning Jennings published knowing the statement was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was, and he has to prove it with "convincing clarity." The test is subjective. It asks what this defendant in fact doubted; what a prudent man would have checked is beside the point. Failure to investigate does not count. To win, Piker needs a false statement and a defendant who knew it was false or seriously doubted it. To win, Jennings needs either half.

Take falsity first. The complaint quotes what Piker said on October 29, 2024, and the original stream bears it out: "He said, 'We need more Klansmen, okay? Can we go back to a better time when lynchings were happening? 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?" He said the words. The clip Jennings aired cuts in mid-sentence, at "go back to a better time," so it carries neither "He said" nor "Can we," nor the "What are you saying?" that ended the bit. But Jennings did not make that cut; whoever assembled the montage for the Senate Republicans' August 6 post did. The complaint concedes as much. Paragraph 26 says Jennings "assembled" the video. Paragraph 81 says his clip was "the same Manipulated Video published on X five days earlier." Fifty-five paragraphs apart, Piker's lawyers contradict their only allegation that Jennings cut anything.

Then comes actual malice, which is where this case is likeliest to die. The complaint does not allege that Jennings watched the original stream or was told before August 11 that the clip was misleading. On the one question that decides the case, it says, "upon information and belief," that Jennings either purposely avoided checking or knew. That is a guess. Its fallback, at paragraph 100, is that if Jennings never watched the stream, he is liable for leaving viewers with the impression that he had. That is failure to investigate under another name, and the Supreme Court rejected it in 1968 and again in 1989. The Snopes fact-check came out August 14, three days after the broadcast; it cannot supply doubts Jennings did not have on August 11. Neither can the retraction demand of August 31; malice is measured on the day of publication.

Piker's best answer is that Jennings knew the clip came from political accounts, and that a montage stitched from three streams gave him obvious reason to doubt it. But there are plenty of reasons why a court may believe Jennings when he says he had no doubts. The Anti-Defamation League's profile of Piker, published in April, described a style that "often relies on inflammatory racist or misogynistic statements delivered in a sensationalist, 'just joking' manner." Jennings was running a recurring segment he called an "exploration of the radical socialist streamer." A man with that file open had less reason than most to assume that a lynching clip was fake.

Then there is Piker's own account of his own words, which should embarrass him more than anything Jennings said. By his telling, he was watching two black commentators debate, and when the conservative blamed woke prosecutors for hurting black Americans, Piker paused the video, laughed, and did the man's voice for him. That is the innocent version: a man who is not black put Klan nostalgia in the mouth of a man who is, for holding the wrong opinion about district attorneys, and his lawyers filed the transcript as exculpatory evidence. When a viewer objected in real time that Piker was "doing too much with black people," Piker, per his own pleading, told him to shut the f*ck up, blocked him, and explained the rules of the house: "there's a line, okay, when talking about or to Black conservatives. I do not cross that line, okay? I might come near that line, but I do not cross that line." The complaint quotes this as proof of good faith but it reads as a description of method. He works near the line by his own account, and his grievance is that a stranger clipping the line might (like his own fans) have missed the subtle sarcasm.

The complaint also says that "few accusations are more serious than falsely portraying someone as an advocate of racially motivated murder." Agreed. On August 20, Piker told his audience that if American Jews keep saying they are invested in Israel, "eventually someone's going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews." Hakeem Jeffries called that "dangerous and antisemitic."

Even if Piker proves everything, he still has to show what the lie cost him, and a jury measures that against the reputation he already had. Showing it usually takes investigators. For Piker, the exhibits are his own streams, already on YouTube under his name.

***

Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq., is Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center.

Create a free account to join the conversation!

Already have an account?