Lawyer for Covington Catholic HS Families Threatens Lawsuits Against Media

Source: PJ Media | January 21, 2019 | Debra Heine

Thanks to the sloppy, one-sided reporting of the malicious, agenda-driven media, a group of Catholic high school teenagers and their families have become the subjects of threats and harassment from a hateful online outrage mob. Their only sins? Being white, Catholic, and supporters of the president.

The full story has emerged in the wake of the fake news blitzkrieg over the weekend, and the media outlets that spread defamatory smears against the kids are now being warned to correct and retract their stories or face a lawsuit. Contrary to the media’s malicious narrative, the kids were not racist rednecks mobbing a Native American elder with hateful slurs. It was quite the opposite.

Video evidence and statements from multiple witnesses indicate that the boys were targeted by two groups of protesters who hurled hateful, racial, homophobic slurs at them while they waited on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for their bus after participating in the March for Life.

It was while they were waiting for their bus that a black separatist fringe group known for making outrageous, racist, anti-gay statements went on a lengthy tirade against them.

Reason’s Robby Soave provided some background on the Black Hebrew Israelites in his report yesterday:

Far from engaging in racially motivated harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites, who were lurking nearby. The BHI has existed since the late 19th century, and is best describes as a black nationalist cult movement; its members believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites, and often express condemnation of white people, Christians, and gays. DC-area Black Hebrews are known to spout particularly vile bigotry.

The BHI members shouted profanities at the boys, calling them names such as “cracker,” “faggot,” and “pedophile,” and singled out a black student for abuse, saying he was a “n*gger” who was going to be murdered and have his organs harvested by the white kids.

Incredibly, virtually all the major media outlets got it wrong. Their own confirmation bias led them to tell a completely different story over the weekend, basing their reportage on the dubious claims of Nathan Phillips without bothering to verify his claims and without seeking to hear the Covington teens’ side of the story.

Without video evidence, the media reported Phillips’ claim that the students subjected him to racist taunts and chanted “Build the Wall.” In all the hours of video available online, no footage has emerged of the kids doing any such thing.

But the video footage taken by the black nationalists themselves does not show the white teenagers attacking them. It shows the BHI members targeting the Catholic kids with verbal abuse. Nevertheless, Phillips described the innocent kids as “beasts” and the black extremists who insulted him as “their prey.”

Again, the video evidence shows the opposite to be true. The “beasts” were the BHI members and the Catholic teenagers were their “prey.”

How hard would it have been for the media to find the full video, which was already online, to verify Phillips’ assertions before running with them? Nothing Phillips was alleging could be corroborated in the viral video clip of Phillips and the smiling teenager, but they reported his claims as gospel anyway.

Unfortunately, like practically everyone else, the boys’ own school threw them under the bus before all the facts were in, The Federalist noted:

No sooner had the boys gotten on their bus than they were thrown under it by their school and the Covington diocese, who issued a  joint statement condemning the students’ actions and saying the matter was under investigation that appropriate action would be taken. Um, if the matter is under investigation, doesn’t that suggest it might be good to wait before condemning the behavior? Could it be that there’s more to the story than a short, viral video?

The school and the diocese owed these boys a full hearing before coming to any conclusion. They now owe them an apology.

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  • Woodcutter #27448

    After a while, the boys asked their chaperones if they could sing their school songs to drown out the abusive taunts being hurled at them. The boys rambunctiously sang the songs, but did not direct any racist slurs at the agitators.

    In the midst of this, a group of Native American activists from the American Indian Movement began to march toward the high schoolers.

    Woodcutter #27454

    The Wall Street Journal published an editorial today that laid out the facts and concluded:

    The new information has people who had so eagerly cast the first stones hastily deleting their tweets. Still, it is telling that some of the most disgusting tweets were the work of the blue-check elites who pride themselves on their tolerance. More surprising is the rush to judgment by those who might have been expected to consider the boys innocent until proven guilty, or at least until all the evidence is in.

    On Saturday the boys’ school issued a joint statement with the Covington Diocese saying they “condemn” the students for their actions and were considering appropriate action “including expulsion.” A post on National Review said the boys might as well have “just spit on the cross.” And the March for Life distanced itself from the “reprehensible behavior” of the marchers from Covington.

    Many of these early critics have now apologized or walked back their initial condemnations. But these social injustices perpetrated on social media are not so easily redressed. Covington Catholic was closed Tuesday for security reasons.

    Most of those who so eagerly maligned these boys will face no lasting consequences, while the boys themselves will always have to wonder, when they are turned down for a job or a school, whether someone had Googled their name and found only half this story. This is an ugly moment in America, all right, but there are few things uglier than a righteous leftist mob.

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