Hate Hoax Yields $3.2M Verdict for Victim. Major Media Response: Crickets.
The far-left mainstream media have ignored a $3.2 million judgment for the victim of a hate hoax, despite multiple reports that vilified the victim at the hoaxers’ behest.
The victim was Asher Vann, who is white and prevailed in a court battle against Summer Smith and her attorney Kim Cole, who are black. The pair alleged to major broadcast outlets and publications that Vann and other kids “tortured” Smith’s son, SeMarion Humphrey.
But nothing of the kind occurred. A GoFundMe account raised more than $100,000 to pay for the lad’s “therapy and private schooling,” but his mom threw away the money on herself.
Though a jury delivered the verdict almost two weeks ago, the three major networks that smeared Vann have yet to report it, a Google site search reveals.
The Scam
As the Washington Free Beacon reported, Smith and Cole hoked up the hoax in March 2021, the aftermath of the George Floyd and ensuing Black Lives Matter hoaxes.
The story was this … supposedly. Evil white “middle schoolers in Plano, Texas, viciously ‘tortured’ SeMarion Humphrey, their black classmate, forcing him to drink their urine at a sleepover as they shot him with BB guns,” the Beacon reported:
A Black Lives Matter activist group charged the local public school district with doing “nothing” to stop “this racially motivated hate crime” as violent protests broke out outside the home of Asher Vann, the white child alleged to have organized the brutal attack.
Major media outlets, including NBC, CBS, CNN, Business Insider, People magazine, the Daily Mail, and the Dallas Morning News, pounced on the story as Humphrey, his mother Summer Smith, and their attorney Kim Cole, embarked on a media tour where they called Vann “evil.” The trio appeared on Good Morning America, where ABC host Linsey Davis promoted a GoFundMe account that raised nearly $120,000 to help pay for Humphrey’s “therapy and private schooling.”
The NAACP and usual suspects moved into high gear, with one BLM-linked hoaxer claiming that Humphrey was “tortured for days.”
As The Dallas Morning News reported in its story about the verdict, Smith waged war against Vann on Facebook. “The posts accused the teen and three of his football teammates of calling Smith’s son, who is Black, racial slurs, shooting him with BB guns and forcing him to drink their urine during a sleepover at Vann’s house,” the newspaper reported.
Smith’s attorney, Cole, created the GoFundMe page, which pulled in $119,000 from gullible donors.
“Smith’s social media campaign soon went viral. Not long after, major television news networks and newspapers were covering the story,” the paper continued:
Keyboard warriors sent a slew of vile and threatening messages directly to Vann or posted online. Protesters rallied outside his home, and threw bricks through a window at his house and his father’s business.
Unhappily for Smith and Cole, a jury found them liable for conceiving the hoax. They will cough up $3.2 million, plus 7.5 percent annual interest from the time of the judgment.
The pair will pay $1,599,000 each for intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy. Smith must pay $6,800 in attorney’s fees; Cole will pay $1,500 in attorney’s fees.
What Really Happened
Plano Police Department officer Patricia McClure said the real story was one of eighth-grade boys “left to their own devices during a big winter storm” sleepover that February. They did what eighth-grade boys often do: prank each other.
McClure said “race was not a factor in any of the events that transpired against Humphrey during the fateful sleepover, a finding confirmed by Linda Washington, the black assistant principal at the middle school the boys attended who also investigated the incident,” the Beacon explained.
Detailing the pubescent high jinks for the website, Vann explained that he and Humphrey were good friends. The boys wanted to hunt frogs with BB and airsoft guns, Vann said, but instead, finding no frogs, “geared up in bulky winter clothing and paintball masks, the children decided to play another game,” the website reported:
“We said, ‘Let’s test out the gear we brought,’” Vann recalled. “SeMarion was like, ‘Okay, shoot me. Test the mask.’ Then we all switched and took turns shooting each other. Everyone got shot and everyone shot someone.”
As for the allegation that Humphrey was forced to drink urine out of a cup, Vann said that, too, was portrayed in the wrong light. After the group willingly shot each other with their BB guns, they walked back to Vann’s house and decided, collectively, that the first one who fell asleep would get pranked.
“This one kid, he did a prank before where he p***ed in a cup and gave it to his little brother,” Vann said. “I woke SeMarion up, handed him the cup. He put it up to his nose, but he didn’t drink it.”
Major Media: Crickets
To its credit, the Daily Mail covered the verdict and unloaded on Smith with this headline: “Black mother ruined life of white boy by lying that he was racist bully who forced her son to drink urine, netting family $120k on GoFundMe.”
But Google searches of NBC, CBS, CNN, and ABC returned no stories about the jury’s finding that Smith and Cole perpetrated the hoax and now will cough up millions as compensation to Vann, now in college.
Vann likely has defamation cases against those networks that would be similar to those brought by Nicholas Sandmann, a victim of the far-left media six years ago. They loudly claimed he was a racist when a crackpot Indian “elder” and supposed Vietnam war hero confronted him during the annual March for Life rally in Washington, D.C.
After the “elder,” Nathan Phillips, confronted the boy and his school chums, the leftist news media smeared Sandmann and falsely presented Phillips not only as a victim of “racism,” but also as a war hero. The ballyhooed reporters did not check Phillips’ military records and simply repeated his false claim.
Phillips was quickly exposed as a faker.
CNN, NBC, and The Washington Post settled lawsuits with Sandmann after they defamed him.
H/T: Jonathan Turley
