Jury Finds CNN Liable for Defamation of Navy Vet
The jury ruled CNN owed “$4 million in economic damages and $1 million in emotional damages.”

A jury found CNN liable for defamation of Zachary Young, a Navy vet and security contractor. Young helped Afghans escape the Taliban during President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.
Young accused CNN of ruining his reputation and destroying his business by portraying him as someone who preyed on Afghans trying to escape, exploiting and profiting off of their fear.
The contractor claimed the story “rendered him a pariah in his industry and sent him down a spiral of depression, sleeplessness and panic attacks.”
The jury ruled CNN owed “$4 million in economic damages and $1 million in emotional damages.”
However, the jury also said CNN should pay punitive damages.
CNN defamation case (Zachary Young v. CNN) verdict being announced by the clerk in Bay County, Florida. Follow @NickFondacaro pic.twitter.com/xBjTo2P0aA
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) January 17, 2025
The story stems from a report on The Lead with Jake Tapper on November 11, 2021.
Nicholas Fondacaro wrote at NewsBusters:
Tapper led into the segment by painting an image of “black market” hustlers who charged “exorbitant fees” taking advantage of desperate people:
In our world today, the U.S. government, the Biden administration says that as of last week it had assisted in the departure of at least 377 U.S. citizens and 279 lawful permanent residents of the U.S. from Afghanistan since August 31st. Still, many Afghans, Afghans who desperately want to flee Taliban rule and Afghans who say their lives are at stake, they remain behind. As CNN’s Alex Marquardt has discovered, Afghans trying to get out of the country, face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.
Chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, who was promoted to that position while the suit was still on going, singled out Young as the face of the people who was “exploit[ing]” “desperate Afghans”:
According to Afghans and activists we’ve spoken with desperate Afghans are being exploited like that young man, told they can get them or their families out if they pay exorbitant often impossible amounts. One LinkedIn user posted messages with Young, where Young said it would be $75,000 for a car to Pakistan. He told another, it would be 14 and a half thousand per person to get to the United Arab Emirates or Albania for another 4,000. Prices well beyond the reach of most Afghans.
Young’s lead counsel Vel Freedman said in his closing that the Marquardt segment ran on 11 different CNN shows both domestically and on CNN International. And, in addition to Marquardt’s defamatory report, it was accompanied by anchors making their own defamatory statements about Young.
Young’s defense presented evidence from behind the scenes and…woo boy:
The jury also found CNN had operated with expressed and actual malice. The evidence presented to the jury was clear; Marquardt had messaged colleagues that he was going to “nail this Zachary Young Mfucker” while calling the report was going to be “your funeral bucko.” CNN editors called him a “shit” and “a shitbag” who had a “punchable face.”
At the same time, senior editor Tom Lumley was warning that Marquardt’s report was “80% emotion and 20% obscured fact” and “full of holes like Swiss cheese.”
The jury also heard witness after witness from CNN who testified under oath they didn’t like that CNN aired an apology and they didn’t think it was needed. All of them testified under oath that they would still run the story. When asked by Freedman and the jury, none of them said they were sorry.
Young filed the lawsuit in 2022. Along with the accusations above, Young said CNN never told its audience “that his clients were nonprofits and corporations, including Bloomberg and Audible, and that his prices reflected complex evacuation logistics.”
Young’s case went forward in June when three judges on the First District Court of Appeal for the State of Florida decided he had enough evidence to move forward.
NewsBusters discovered CNN scrubbed the segment from the page for the episode.
No one made a note about the missing segment.
Defamation is hard to prove for obvious reasons. You know, the First Amendment.
Well, this case, among others, has provided more hints that the mainstream media outlets consider themselves untouchable.
But as the outlets continue to shed the mask, they’re going to find that people don’t have them on the pedestal:
Lyrissa Lidsky, a University of Florida law professor who focuses on defamation and free-speech law, said the verdict shows that jurors are less willing to give news media the benefit of the doubt.
Among the lessons from the litigation, she said: “If you have people on your team waving red flags, you probably should take that seriously.”
David Axelrod, a CNN attorney, provided a great example! He told the jurors “that the higher the penalty, the less money CNN would have to cover natural disasters and global conflicts.”
BREAKING: "Settlement has been reached."
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 17, 2025

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Comments
The only evacuation these talking heads can handle takes place seated on an American Standard.
Tears from CNN over the possibility of punitive damages large.enough to be ….punitive. The point of punitive damages is to both punish and deter future bad acts. A major media Company needs a big number for those two things to occur.
Absolutely. Lets hope that the punitive damages are large enough to deter CNN and other corporate fake news outlets.
Young should go on camera and publicly state that he will use a portion/all punitive damages received as contributions to charity.
This might lead to a larger punitive damage figure.
Aren’t punitive damages treble the actual damages? Meaning another $15 million should be coming.
Depends on the state.
Some states have capped punitive damages to stop “jackpot justice” of the Mississippi was famous for.
Apparently they settled Punitives, with an NDA, of course
I suspect the amount of a negotiated settlement is not small given the jury, the judge, the venue and the potential for huge damages.
The jury asked to review the financial statements of CNN and its parent company Warner Brothers Discovery.
This morning somebody reported that during their deliberations the jury had asked for a calculator.
That’s probably not something any defense lawyer wants to hear, EVER.
Alex Jones precedent…
What is going on? First it was the terrible cease fire deal with Hamas.
And now a settlement with CNN when there could be HUGE defamatory judgement? And probably an NDA so even if they were made to pay a lot for the settlement, we won’t know the amount.
Hit it in one. Settlement before it got back to the jury and an NDA. I bet it hurt CNN less than $1,000,000,000 but was pretty stiff.
It looks like being in the fake news industry is getting expensive nowadays
I am tickled to see Zachary Young receive justice, and hope as people come to understand how awful liberal media has become, that there will be increasing amounts as more cases are brought.
So obviously the settlement is going to come with an NDA.
My personal opinion is that the final settlement amount was $20-30 million.
I mean you started with $5 million as a baseline because that’s what was already awarded.
CNN would go that high because they’re rightly terrified of how many zeroes a jury that already found against them is going to tack on, and the plaintiff probably settled because it means he gets the money now and doesn’t have to risk some far leftist hack reversing it on appeal.
$20-30 million is my gut.
If it were me, I’d demand the $5 million plus the value of Jake Tapper’s contract which was just renewed last year , which was $21 million ($7 million a year for 3 years), so $26 million total.
If they were willing to pay Tapper that much AFTER he defamed me, then they can definitely pay me the same amount.
That’s just my 2c
Here’s my guess. They settled to NOT have the punitive damages be listed punitive- and put it as the overall settlement.
Insurance will cover the settlement in this manner.
Insurance WILL NOT cover punitive damages. So they are screwing their insurance provider.
That’s a good way to have your house burn down.
Liberals have short memories. Like last week in LA short.
Recall Oberlin and their insurance company. Insurance companies these days are not going to settle for those kind of machinations, they are not in business to make up for a client’s foolishness.
You may be correct, but I would hope it would be significantly in excess to $ 20-30 Million. This has to HURT CNN, or it’s meaningless. That’s why they call it ‘Punitive’, a clear message must be sent to their corporate leadership. Just as I hope clear messages were received at ABC and other networks being sued, they have gone too far, too many times. Enough!
Jake Tapeworm finally paying for his actions
Has anyone heard ANYTHING about the amount of the ‘Punitive settlement’? It has been 24 hours since the NDA was signed, by this time the amount should be all over the internet-if history is any judge. LOL
I have never seen the amounts of those settlements reported in any other case, and highly doubt they will be this time.
We have a lawyer or two in here, so I hope for an answer to my question. Some years back, I was chatting with a lawyer about medical malpractice (I don’t remember how it came up), and he said that punitive damages in those cases were usually limited to 10 times the costs of any treatment plus any other actual damages.
So, was I told right, and would this idea have applied to this case and maybe limited the punitive damages to $50 million after all the appeals?
Florida Statutes 768.73:
c) Where the fact finder determines that at the time of injury the defendant had a specific intent to harm the claimant and determines that the defendant’s conduct did in fact harm the claimant, there shall be no cap on punitive damages.
I have to believe the settlement was significant–the jury already found against CNN and then said they wanted to look at CNN’s financials–didn’t they pay out significant amounts for the kid they defamed?
Warner Brothers needs to call CNN’s management in for a heart to heart, and CNN needs to fire Young and Tapper immediately–they are walking liability
Young is the plaintiff.