Covington Catholic Dad Pushes Anti-Doxxing Legislation, Wants Criminal Charges Against Media
Tom Pappert
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Ted Sandmann, father of viral Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann, is now pushing for anti-doxxing legislation that would have allowed criminal charges against journalists and social media users who spread personal information about his son and called for physical violence against him.
As the Sandmann family prepares for legal action against those who spread lies and threats of violence about the Covington Catholic students, the Sandmann patriarch is calling for the Kentucky legislature to pass anti-doxxing legislation that would have protected his son.
The legislation, Kentucky Senate Bill 240, would “create a new felony of disseminating personally identifying information on the Internet about a minor,” allowing police to seek criminal charges against the many journalists and social media users who spread fake news about Sandmann.
“Had this legislation been in place today, prosecutors might be able to bring criminal charges against people like Reza Aslan (a television commentator) who responded to fake news about my son by tweeting a screenshot of Nick looking at Phillips and writing ‘Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s,’” said Sandmann, mentioning that Bakari Sellers of CNN agreed with Aslan.
“For the pain, fear and anxiety these two men caused Nicholas and my family, I think they deserve a criminal charge,” he added.
Without this bill, the Sandmann family has been forced to seek damages in civil court, and has retained Atlanta-based L. Lin Wood, one of the best defamation lawyers in the country, for the purpose of holding journalists, politicians, and other public figures accountable for their false statements.
Wood spoke with Big League Politics regarding the legal action earlier this year:
“The members of the mob who falsely attacked or threatened Nick Sandmann should be on notice that his attorneys will identify them and will take aggressive legal action against them to achieve full accountability for their wrongdoing and willful mistreatment of this young man,” Wood told Big League Politics.
“While our focus is to seek redress for the damage wrongfully inflicted upon Nick, we hope that a byproduct of our efforts for Nick will be to effectuate a sea change in how people in our society treat each other, especially when our children are involved. Nick is not the first victim of a premature rush to judgment based on false information, personal or political agendas, rumors and speculation. Hopefully, through our efforts for Nick and the efforts of an army of individuals and entities who support him and the rule of law, a lesson will finally be learned. We will be relentless in our pursuit of justice for Nick. This is not a threat – this is a fact.”
The Diocese of Covington has since admitted that they were factually incorrect and apologized for jumping to conclusions about the Covington Catholic teens, and a private investigator’s report confirms the teenagers did nothing untoward during their interaction with Native American activist Nathan Phillips.
For his part, Phillips was most recently spotted assaulting a Breitbart video journalist and then running from the scene.
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