Streamer Hasan Piker Sues Scott Jennings for $72.5 Million Over Lynching Remarks

Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has filed a defamation lawsuit against conservative commentator and CNN contributor Scott Jennings, alleging that Jennings falsely claimed Piker supported lynchings. Piker is seeking at least $72.5 million in damages.

The dispute stems from an August podcast in which Jennings played clips of Piker from 2024. In those clips, Piker was reacting to a debate between two Black political commentators. He sarcastically said, "I want to go back to lynching," in a remark meant to mock nostalgia for the period before the civil rights movement.

Jennings told his listeners that Piker was "out there calling for Black voters to be lynched" and had a "plan of returning our country to lynchings."

The complaint, filed Tuesday in federal court, says Jennings knowingly misrepresented the remarks. "Jennings did not merely mischaracterize something Mr. Piker said," the filing states. "He took a false, fabricated, and manipulated video of Mr. Piker, added a made-up quotation that Mr. Piker never uttered, and then made accusations that went beyond even what the manipulated footage purported to show."

According to the lawsuit, the footage was doctored to cut out the debate Piker had been analyzing. It also left out the words "he said," which had signaled that Piker was voicing a caricature of the commentator he was criticizing. Piker says most viewers of his stream understood the comments as sarcasm.

The complaint cites findings from Snopes, the independent fact-checker, which examined the episode. "A full review of Piker's unedited remarks confirms Jennings falsely claimed Piker said he was in favor of bringing back lynchings," the filing states. It adds that in the original stream, Piker's remarks on lynchings were sarcastic reactions to a user's chat comment and to opinions expressed by someone else in a separate video.

The suit further argues that Jennings' comments were calculated to provoke outrage while he tries to win favor with President Trump, amid talk that Jennings could be named White House press secretary.

Piker's lawyers also say they approached Jennings in August, demanding that he identify the false statements to his audience. According to the complaint, they never received a response.