President Trump’s new favorite news network filed a lawsuit against one of his most frequent media punching bags: Rachel Maddow and her employer, MSNBC.
One America News Network, a small, family-owned television network based in San Diego, California, is suing Maddow, MSNBC, NBC Universal and Comcast for $10 million, alleging Maddow defamed one of its employees.
In the suit, One America News (OAN) owner Herring Networks alleges that a week after its president Charles Herring contacted Comcast to question why the company wouldn’t carry OAN on its network, MSNBC — which is owned by Comcast — “ran a hit piece” on OAN. The “hit piece” referenced in the suit is the July 22 episode of the “Rachel Maddow Show” in which Maddow explained an OAN employee’s ties to Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned media outlet. OAN writer Kristian Rouz has written as a freelancer for Sputnik News for the last four years.
“In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda,” Maddow said during the show in question. “Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”
Herring Networks argues Maddow defamed OAN and Rouz with those remarks. In the suit Rouz says he’s “never written propaganda, disinformation, or unverified information.”
A spokesperson for Maddow’s show did not immediately return TPM’s requests for comment.
Read OANN’s full lawsuit below:
