Lawsuit Against CNN: Verdicts, Settlements, and Dismissals

Lawsuits against CNN over the past several years have been dominated by defamation claims from public figures and, in one case, a private security contractor — with mixed results. CNN lost a $5 million jury verdict to Navy veteran Zachary Young in January 2025 and settled hours later, but it has defeated defamation suits brought by Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, Kash Patel, and Devin Nunes. A revived Project Veritas case and a privacy class action over website tracking tools remain active.

Young v. CNN: The Case CNN Lost

The most consequential recent lawsuit against CNN was filed by Zachary Young, a Navy veteran who ran a Florida security consulting company called Nemex Enterprises. After the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Young worked to evacuate people from Afghanistan for corporate and nonprofit clients including Audible, Bloomberg, H.E.R.O. Inc., and CivilFleet Support eV. His attorneys said he sought funding from organizations rather than payments from individuals.¹

On November 11, 2021, “The Lead with Jake Tapper” aired a segment by Alex Marquardt describing a “black market” for evacuations involving “exorbitant fees” and “no guarantee of safety or success.” Young was the only private operator named. His face and name appeared onscreen above a chyron referencing the “black market” language, and the segment was republished on CNN’s website and social accounts.²

What Discovery Uncovered

Young sued for defamation per se, defamation by implication, and trade libel. Internal Slack messages produced in discovery proved central. Senior national security editor Tom Lumley called the story “a mess,” “incomplete,” and “80 percent emotion, 20 percent obscured fact.” Executive editor Allison Hoffman wrote that “this isn’t how it’s meant to work.” Reporter Alex Marquardt wrote, “We gonna nail this Zachary Young mf******,” and a producer described Young as having a “punchable face.” Young’s team also showed he had messaged Marquardt hours before airtime warning of factual errors, which CNN aired anyway.³²

About four months after the broadcast, a substitute anchor on “The Lead” apologized on air, saying CNN “did not intend to suggest that Mr. Young participated in a black market” and calling the term an error. CNN removed the video from its website. Young’s team called the apology insufficient.⁴

The Verdict and Settlement

The trial began in January 2025 before Judge William S. Henry in Bay County, Florida. Judge Henry had ruled pretrial that Young was not a public figure, so his lawyers needed to prove only negligence rather than actual malice.⁴ CNN’s senior director of standards, Fuzz Hogan, testified he had approved a story he called “three-quarters true.” CNN employees testified they “would do it again” and had “nothing to apologize for.”⁵

On January 17, 2025, after eight hours of deliberation over two days, a six-person jury found CNN liable for defamation per se and defamation by implication and awarded Young $5 million in compensatory damages. The jury also found CNN’s conduct egregious enough to warrant punitive damages, moving the case into a punitive phase.⁶⁷

About four hours after the compensatory verdict, the parties settled for an undisclosed sum. Young’s attorney Vel Freedman said the settlement was chosen to “avoid protracted appeals.” CNN said it remained “100% committed to strong, fearless and fair-minded reporting” while promising to “take what useful lessons we can from this case.” Young later told the Daily Mail that CNN had retracted its earlier on-air apology and that leadership was “firmly behind” the journalists involved.⁸⁵

Trump’s $475 Million “Big Lie” Lawsuit

Donald Trump filed a $475 million defamation suit against CNN on October 3, 2022, in the U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale. The complaint alleged CNN used the phrase “the Big Lie” more than 7,700 times after January 2021 to describe his 2020 election claims, and also cited on-air labels including “racist,” “Russian lackey,” “insurrectionist,” and comparisons to Adolf Hitler.⁹¹⁰

U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal dismissed the case in July 2023, holding that the statements were protected opinion, not fact. Trump appealed.¹¹¹²¹³

Dershowitz v. CNN and the Supreme Court Petition

Alan Dershowitz filed a $300 million defamation suit in 2020 in the Southern District of Florida over CNN’s coverage of his defense of Trump during the first Senate impeachment trial. Dershowitz argued CNN broadcasts deceptively edited his remarks to imply he had said a president could commit any impeachable offense if done in the “public interest,” omitting qualifying language.¹⁴

The district court dismissed the case in 2023, and a unanimous 11th Circuit panel affirmed on August 29, 2025. Judge Britt Grant wrote that Dershowitz failed to prove actual malice; the commentators held a “sincere — if mistaken or even overwrought — belief” in their accusations, and CNN had aired Dershowitz’s full remarks and invited him on to clarify.¹⁴

The concurrences drew attention. Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote that “under any common understanding of the term” Dershowitz had been defamed, and that CNN anchors “simply lied about what Dershowitz had said,” but that binding precedent under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan compelled the outcome. She questioned whether the Sullivan standard has grounding in the Constitution’s text.¹⁴

Dershowitz has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court (No. 25-770), asking whether systematic omission of qualifying language proves actual malice, whether the actual malice standard should be modified or “discarded altogether,” and whether Sullivan’s evidentiary standards should change. The petition remains pending and has been repeatedly relisted, with the most recent conference distribution scheduled for June 18, 2026.¹⁵¹⁶

Project Veritas: Revived on Appeal

Project Veritas sued CNN in April 2021 after anchor Ana Cabrera stated on air that Twitter had suspended the group’s account as part of a “crackdown” on the “spread of misinformation.” Twitter had actually suspended the account for violating its policy against publishing private information. The complaint noted Cabrera had accurately tweeted the real reason for the suspension just four days before making the contradictory on-air statement.¹⁷

The Northern District of Georgia dismissed the case in 2022, but on November 7, 2024, the 11th Circuit reversed and remanded, finding Project Veritas had “plausibly alleged” both defamation and actual malice under New York law. Judge Ed Carnes wrote in a concurrence: “I never thought I’d see a major news organization downplaying the importance of telling the truth in its broadcasts. But that is what CNN has done in this case.” The case is proceeding.¹⁷

Dismissed Defamation Suits and the Sandmann Settlement

Kash Patel, later nominated as FBI Director by President Trump, sued CNN over two late-2020 stories he said linked him to efforts to spread conspiracy theories about Joe Biden and pressure Ukraine to investigate the Biden family. On January 21, 2025, a divided Virginia Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal, ruling Patel failed to meet the “exacting constitutional standards” for defamation because his allegations targeted CNN “generally” without connecting them to the state of mind of specific reporters. One judge dissented.¹⁸

Former Congressman Devin Nunes sued CNN for defamation and civil conspiracy. The case was filed in Virginia and transferred to the Southern District of New York, where it was dismissed because Nunes failed to request a retraction within 20 days as California law required. On April 14, 2022, the Second Circuit affirmed 2-1.¹⁹

Nick Sandmann, then a Covington Catholic High School student, sued CNN for $275 million over its coverage of a January 2019 encounter at the Lincoln Memorial. CNN settled with him in January 2020 for a confidential sum. Because Sandmann was a minor, the settlement initially had to go through Kenton County probate court, which would have made the terms public. The parties paused the process until Sandmann turned 18 in July 2020, then finalized the deal confidentially.²⁰

When CNN Was the Plaintiff: The Acosta Press Pass

CNN itself sued the Trump administration in November 2018 after correspondent Jim Acosta’s White House press credentials were revoked following a contentious news-conference exchange. On November 16, 2018, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly ordered the White House to reinstate Acosta’s press pass on Fifth Amendment due process grounds, finding the White House had not given Acosta fair process. Judge Kelly called the administration’s initial justification — that Acosta had inappropriately touched a White House intern — “likely untrue.” The White House restored the credentials on November 19, 2018, with new rules limiting reporters to a single question and follow-ups at officials’ discretion.²¹²²

Privacy Class Action Over Website Tracking

Not every active lawsuit against CNN involves defamation. In D’Antonio v. Cable News Network, Inc. (No. 1:24-cv-03132, S.D.N.Y.), plaintiff Anthony D’Antonio alleges CNN embedded tracking tools from Microsoft, PubMatic, and OpenX Technologies on its website and collected visitors’ personal information without consent for targeted advertising. The complaint claims the trackers function as a “pen register” under the California Invasion of Privacy Act by capturing routing and signaling information, and that the data was used to build “comprehensive marketing profiles.”²³

On April 9, 2026, Judge Victor Marrero denied CNN’s motion to dismiss, finding the plaintiff adequately pleaded standing because “aggregation of tracking data into comprehensive, non-anonymous user profiles bears a close enough relationship to traditional privacy torts.” The case is proceeding. Class certification has not yet been addressed, and no damages figures or class size have been disclosed.²³

Why the Results Cluster the Way They Do

The pattern across these cases is not random. Young, a private figure, only had to prove negligence — and he won. Trump, Dershowitz, Patel, and Nunes are public figures who had to prove actual malice under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which requires showing the speaker knew a statement was false or recklessly disregarded the truth. Each of their cases failed at the pleading or summary-judgment stage on that standard, even where judges suggested CNN’s reporting was unfair. Judge Lagoa’s Dershowitz concurrence, saying CNN “simply lied” but was shielded by Sullivan, and Judge Carnes’s remark that CNN was “downplaying the importance of telling the truth,” reflect judicial frustration that has fed the pending Dershowitz petition asking the Supreme Court to revisit the 1964 precedent.²⁴

Whether the Court grants review will shape the next round of litigation against CNN and every other American news organization.

1
Courthouse News Service. CNN Pokes Holes in Security Contractor’s Defamation Claims Over Afghanistan Evacuation Story
2
First District Court of Appeal of Florida. Young v. CNN, No. 1D2023-2237
3
Georgetown University Free Speech Project. CNN Settles With Navy Veteran After Defamation Verdict in Black Market Afghanistan Rescue Case
4
OPB. CNN Faces Defamation Trial Over Story on Black Market Rescues From Afghanistan
5
GPB News. CNN Settles Lawsuit After $5 Million Defamation Verdict
6
Courthouse News Service. CNN Loses in Florida Defamation Case
7
Wall Street Journal. CNN Found Liable for Defaming U.S. Navy Veteran in Afghanistan Evacuation Story
8
Washington Post. CNN Defamation Afghanistan Withdrawal
9
PBS NewsHour. Donald Trump Files $475 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against CNN
10
First Amendment Watch. Trump Files $475 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against CNN
11
Deadline. Trump CNN Lawsuit Dismissed Appeals Court
12
Politico. Court Rejects Trump Big Lie Defamation Lawsuit
13
CNN. Trump CNN Big Lie Defamation Lawsuit Appeals
14
Courthouse News Service. 11th Circuit Tosses Alan Dershowitz Defamation Claims Against CNN
15
SCOTUSblog. Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc.
16
SCOTUSblog. New York Times v. Sullivan, Service and Sentence Credits
17
Georgia Recorder. Appeals Court Revives Project Veritas Lawsuit Against CNN
18
Bloomberg Law. Patel CNN Defamation Lawsuit Fails to Advance After Appeal
19
Courthouse News Service. Second Circuit Shreds Nunes Defamation Claims Against CNN
20
The Columbus Dispatch. Nick Sandmann’s Settlement With CNN Was Almost Public
21
BBC News. Jim Acosta: White House Restores CNN Reporter’s Press Pass
22
New York Times. Judge Orders White House to Return Jim Acosta’s Press Pass
23
Bloomberg Law. CNN Stuck With Suit Challenging Use of Online Tracking Tools
24
Supreme Court of the United States. Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc., No. 25-770