The midterm elections are over, but the multi-million defamation battle between Hasan Piker and Scott Jennings over what the progressive streamer said about lynching in America 2026, and the context in which he said it, is just getting started.
In a 15-page response to Piker’s $72.5 million lawsuit of last month, the conservative CNN contributor does whatever the double-down version of doubling-down is. To that, Jennings wants a federal judge throw Piker’s action out.
“The Court should dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted,” says the motion placed in the DC court docket Tuesday by Jennings’ attorneys Benjamin Chew, Nina Franco and Peter Baumhart.
Describing the politically influential Piker as “an internet personality and provocateur” who “makes his living courting controversy—to put it mildly,” the filing doesn’t note the irony of such a statement coming from reps for MAGAman Jennings, who many would say does exactly the same thing, and did it in this case. In fact, Piker’s Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch lawyers alleging in their initial October 27 filing that regular CNN NewsNight panelist Jennings is himself all about “political controversy.”
It is in that vein that Piker’s attorneys particularly pinpoint Jennings’ August 11 podcast where they assert the Trump press secretary auditioning pundit “falsely told his listeners that Mr. Piker had a ‘plan of returning our country to lynchings …then he falsely told his social media followers that Mr. Piker says the USA should resume lynchings against black people.’”
Which is why Piker, who has subsequently said he may pursue similar methods against others he believes take his words out of context, wants $72.5 million bucks from Jennings.
Seeking an oral argument ASAP before Judge Amit P. Mehta on today’s motion, Jennings team admit that “in August 2026, Mr. Jennings played on his political discussion program a video of Mr. Piker saying these things.” Noting the video in question was off a social media site attributed to “Senate Republicans,” they describe that “Mr. Piker now alleges that “the video—which 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—was defamatory, as was Mr. Jennings’s accompanying commentary.”
Basically, Jennings’ argument is that on the August 11 edition of The Scott Jennings Show he took at face value what he saw and heard Piker utter on the supposedly GOP connected feed.
Instead, declaring there is no “actual malice” alleged by Piker, out of that commentary, Jennings’ attorneys in today’s parsed response say “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.” They add: “The dispute is over whether those statements reflect what he really meant, which is not sufficiently verifiable to be actionable as defamation. On either or both of these independently sufficient grounds, Mr. Piker’s claims should be dismissed.”
Again, Jennings appears to be affirming that whether or not he disagrees or agrees with Piker politically, Piker is a fella who commonly says outrageous things and what was on this video tracked with that stance — hence his reaction.
Maintaining “the first factor—’the common usage or meaning of the allegedly defamatory words’—is somewhat ill-fitted to the facts of this case,” the lawyers for the former Mitch McConnell aide propose “the proper focus of the analysis is therefore not on the words Mr. Jennings used, but on the premise implicit in his commentary that Mr. Piker’s statements were genuine. That premise, because it is unspoken, necessarily does not admit of the sort of linguistic analysis called for by the first factor.”
One factor to consider: even as this charged suit moves through the courts, Jennings continues to appear on CNN talking politics.
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