The Covington Catholic High School story was a media disaster. Failure. Embarrassment. Innocent teens were excoriated by myriad left-wingers, some of whom were in the media and at the ready to lambast MAGA-hat-wearing scoundrels (here, here, here, here, and here).

Fast-forward past a narrative-correction of gargantuan proportion to a $250 million dollar lawsuit.

Todd McMurtie — an attorney representing Covington student Nicholas Sandmann in his grievance against The Washington Post — told Fox News radio the suit aims to disarm a newspaper-gone-politically-weaponized activist.

The action alleges the Post utilized “using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles which effectively provided a worldwide megaphone to (Nathan) Phillips and other anti-Trump individuals and entities to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the President.”

“What we hope to accomplish with the lawsuit,” McMurtie explained to Fox host Todd Starnes, “obviously, is to obtain a large verdict. And the reason we want to obtain a large verdict is so that things like the things that happened to Nick did not happen to others.”

I suppose $250 million’s a good way to go about that.

McMurtie said the only fact the Post got right was the singular one they cared about: that Nicholas was wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

“I mean, Nick is 16 years old. He hasn’t even told me what his political affiliation is. And nobody knows, really, what their political affiliation is going to be when they’re 16. But because he was wearing that hat, he was used as a, you know, as a victim of scorn by the media, just so the media could make the point it wanted to make.”

The financial damages pursued break down to $50 million in compensatory damages involving emotional distress and Nicholas’s reputation, and $200 million in punitive damages.

To McMurtie, the Post is loud, but money is the biggest mouth in the world:

“Money is the way to inflict enough suffering on, you know, a weaponized publication like The Washington Post, so that that they won’t do it again. And there’s other people — other organizations and media outlets — that have become weaponized against our president.”

And the attorney isn’t finished:

“We’ve identified a number of other individuals of news outlets that we think are also potentially liable for defamation. We’ve analyzed these matters and we think we have a good-faith basis to bring these claims and over the next 30 and 60 days, you will see more lawsuits.”

McMurtie is right: A large publisher such as The Washington Post — an entity capable of severe destruction when managed recklessly — can only be held in check by threat of legal consequence with regard to false reporting.

Hopefully, the entire Covington incident taught the media a lesson — and they’ll subsequently keep from jumping the gun on claims of MAGA-related misdeeds.

Oh, wait — JUSSIE SMOLLETT (here, here, and here).

-Alex

Relevant RedState links in this article: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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