Hasan Piker Is Suing Scott Jennings for $72.5 Million and Honestly, Good Morning to Him

Seventy-two point five million dollars. That is the number. Sit with it.

Darlings, Hasan Piker has filed a defamation suit against CNN commentator Scott Jennings, per Deadline, Variety, Bloomberg Law, The Hill, and approximately every other outlet that has a legal desk. The claim, according to filings, is that Jennings allegedly shared a video that was, per Piker's complaint, "false, fabricated, and manipulated", a clip that purportedly showed Piker calling for racial violence, specifically a lynching misquote taken wildly out of context.

Darling, that is not a denial. That is a lawsuit with a comma in the dollar amount.

Scott Jennings, for the unfamiliar, is a Republican strategist who has made his CNN career out of being the affably wrong guy at the panel table. Now he allegedly decided to traffic in a manipulated clip of a very online leftist with a documented history of keeping receipts. The audacity of the miscalculation here is genuinely staggering.

And if this feels familiar, it is because Ted Cruz tried a version of this exact move just days ago, accusing Piker of slur use, and Piker responded by threatening a lawsuit there too. A pattern is emerging. People keep swinging at this man with bad evidence and he keeps filing paperwork.

The $72.5 million figure is not accidental. That number is a statement. It is the scoreboard set to maximum. Whether or not a jury ever awards a dime is a different conversation for a different courtroom, but the filing itself is the message: you do not get to put a fake clip of me calling for racial violence on a national news network and walk away clean.

We wish Scott Jennings strength in this trying time of his own making. We love growth. We keep receipts. And my loves, so, apparently, does Hasan Piker's legal team.

Prediction: Jennings issues a statement calling this "meritless" within 72 hours. Piker streams the whole thing.