In a shocking ruling, a Florida judge has granted access to internal CNN financial records to attorneys for U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young, who has filed a defamation suit against the far-left network for smearing his company.
During a 2021 segment on the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous botched Afghanistan withdrawal, CNN tried to smear Nemex Enterprises Inc. for daring to help evacuate people from Afghanistan who had been abandoned by the Biden-Harris administration.
Young, who owns the security consulting company, sued CNN after they falsely suggested that Nemex had illegally profited from the evacuations — accusing CNN of destroying “his reputation and business by branding him an illegal profiteer who exploited desperate Afghans.”
EXCLUSIVE: CNN Receives Major Blow from Court in Defamation Case https://t.co/DLkCdDoWL0
— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) August 10, 2024
In his complaint, Young noted that the defamation came during the November 11, 2021, segment of CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.” He argued that Tapper and another correspondent had defamed his company and his character when they falsely claimed that his company had been “exploiting” Afghans and illegally profiting from their efforts to rescue people abandoned by the Biden-Harris administration as the Taliban took over the country.
Young further accused CNN of painting him as a bad actor who preyed upon vulnerable Afghans — with the network using language such as “black market,” “exploit,” and “exorbitant” to describe the rescue efforts.
These allegations of defamation are backed up by comments made during the show, when Tapper claimed that Afghans who were trying to flee the country had encountered “a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.”
CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt then jumped in to claim that “desperate Afghans are being exploited” and are forced to pay “exorbitant, often impossible amounts” to flee from the country. Marquardt specifically called out Young and his company, showing a picture of him on the screen while claiming that Nemex was seeking $75,000 to transport just one vehicle of passengers to Pakistan.
In the complaint, Young noted that he had exchanged messages with Marquardt “just hours before publication where he advised there were factual inaccuracies in the reporting” — but CNN just “published anyway.”
CNN's Axe to Grind with a Private Citizen@NewsBusters Managing Editor @CurtisHouck tells the story of Zachary Young, who is seeking damages that could exceed $1 billion, This, for a story that aired on CNN on Jake Tapper's show. The story alleged Young ripped off people who… pic.twitter.com/PtcIWexIMa
— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) June 25, 2024
Young’s attorneys filed to obtain broad access to CNN’s financial records to determine the company’s net worth, which CNN objected to. However, Judge William Henry of the 14th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida at least somewhat agreed with Young’s attorneys — ruling to both “sustain” and “overrule” the motion, while ordering CNN to turn over the documents from a more limited time frame than Young’s attorneys requested.
In his ruling, the judge ordered that the plaintiff’s “financial discovery requests shall be limited to the time period from Sept. 2021 to the present, except as to documents that can only be produced on a yearly basis, in which case the applicable time period will be from Jan. 1, 2021, to the present,” according to court documents obtained by Fox News.
Henry further ruled that, to obtain the records, Young’s legal team “may serve a subpoena on Warner Bros. Discovery” — CNN’s parent company.
A civil trial in this case has been scheduled for January 6, 2025, and will be held in the Circuit Court of Bay County, Florida, and presided over by Judge Henry.
