EXCLUSIVE: Scott Jennings Moves To Dismiss Hasan Piker’s $72.5 Million Lawsuit

WASHINGTON—Conservative commentator Scott Jennings on Tuesday filed a motion to dismiss leftist streamer Hasan Piker’s defamation suit against him, The Daily Wire can first report.

Piker, who rose to national prominence in recent months as a close ally of Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, last week filed a $72.5 million suit against Jennings over an August episode of the CNN commentator’s radio show, in which Jennings said Piker was “out there calling for Black voters to be lynched,” according to the filings.

According to Piker, Jennings relied on a 42-second clip shared on X by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which takes out of context remarks the streamer says were sarcastic. He is seeking at least $27.5 million in compensatory damages and $45 million in punitive damages from the CNN contributor.

Jennings’ attorney pushed back in Tuesday’s filing, noting that “Mr. Jennings did not create, edit, or manipulate and had no reason to doubt based on the source of the video and the totality of what is known about Mr. Piker’s general worldview.”

“Mr. Jennings’ filing today puts great trust in the U.S. Constitution, the truth, and the right of Americans to speak, even if Mr. Piker doesn’t like what they have to say,” Jennings’ attorney, Benjamin Chew, said in a statement.

As a public figure, Piker must meet the “actual malice” standard to prevail on his defamation claims, proving that Jennings knew he was making false statements on his show or recklessly disregarded whether they were true. Jennings’ attorney insists this is not the case.

“The NRSC Video contains statements that Mr. Piker actually made, and the accurate quoting of another’s statement cannot defame the speaker’s reputation since the speaker is himself responsible for whatever harm the words might cause,” the motion reads. “And second, the statements in the NRSC Video are literally true — there is and can be no dispute that Mr. Piker said what he is on camera saying. The dispute is over whether those statements reflect what he really meant, which is not sufficiently verifiable to be actionable as defamation.”

“The few factual allegations [Piker] makes are insufficient to plead actual malice as a matter of law, and his speculation and conclusory assertions cannot fill the gaps,” the motion continues. “Just because Mr. Jennings ‘had a different interpretation of the’ statements in the NRSC Video does not plausibly establish actual malice.”

Jennings’ attorney also argues that the commentator would have had no reason to assume Piker was kidding, given his history of “appalling invective.”

“Hasan Piker makes his living courting controversy — to put it mildly,” the filing reads, before cataloguing some of the streamer’s more radical statements.

“Some of his more appalling invective includes saying that ‘America deserved 9/11,’ America is ‘the absolute worst f*cking place on the planet, just a horrific, monstrous, awful, dogsh*t country that I f*cking despise, the absolute fucking worst country,’ and ‘I f*ck the Constitution. I—I wipe my ass with the Constitution.'”

During an October 2024 livestream, Piker reacted to a debate between two black political commentators in which one of the participants, a conservative, blamed “woke DAs” for policies he said were hurting black Americans. Piker paused the video and said, according to the complaint:

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?

The video Jennings aired and later posted to X omits the words “he said” and Piker’s subsequent laughter, Piker’s lawsuit claims. The complaint also alleges that Jennings added the on-screen caption, “Let’s go back to a better time when lynchings were happening,” wording Piker’s lawyers say he never used in the 2024 livestream.

But Piker, who has repeatedly mocked black conservatives and used the N-word on camera, “has also advocated for violence against landlords and ‘destroy[ing] the White race,'” Jennings’ motion reads. “He claims, with all apparent sincerity, that he ‘would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.’ These additional statements only lend further credence to an interpretation that Mr. Piker’s comments about lynching and being a racist could accurately reflect his views.”

“Any reflexive disbelief that someone would openly admit to such a view is significantly undercut in Mr. Piker’s case, given his warm embrace of such extremist positions as that the terroristic murder of thousands of innocent American civilians was somehow ‘deserved.'”