The video at the center of Hasan Piker's $72.5 million defamation lawsuit against Scott Jennings remains on Jennings' X account, despite an August 14 Snopes investigation finding his accusations false and an August 31 formal retraction demand from Piker's attorneys.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HASAN PIKER, Plaintiff, v. SCOTT JENNINGS, Defendant. COMPLAINT WITH JURY DEMAND 1. On August 11, 2026, Scott Jennings falsely told a nationwide podcast audience that Hasan Piker was “out there calling for Black voters to be lynched.” He falsely told his listeners that Mr. Piker had a “plan of returning our country to lynchings.” And then he falsely told his social media followers that Mr. Piker “says the USA should resume lynchings against black people.” 2. All of Mr. Jennings’ accusations are false. Mr. Piker has never advocated the lynching of Black Americans, or anyone else. He has never called for a return to lynchings. And he has never proposed anything remotely resembling the supposed plan that Mr. Jennings falsely attributed to him. 3. Mr. Jennings did not merely mischaracterize something Mr. Piker said. 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. Mr. Jennings presented those accusations as fact, telling his viewers to “[l]isten for yourself” about Mr. Piker, knowing that he was playing a falsified video of Mr. Piker for those viewers, and completely disregarding the truth of Mr. Piker’s actual words. 4. The underlying footage came from a broadcast nearly two years earlier on Twitch, an online streaming service owned by Amazon. On October 29, 2024, Mr. Piker was reacting to a debate between two Black political commentators, one liberal and one conservative. When the conservative commentator blamed “woke DAs” for policies supposedly harming Black Americans, Mr. Piker mocked him by sarcastically portraying that comment as nostalgia for an era before the civil rights movement. Laughing, Mr. Piker said: He said, “We need more Klansman, okay? Can we go back to a better time when lynchings were happening? This is what I like as a Black man. Also, there’s no real racism in America.” My man said, “woke DAs,” dude. What are you saying? 5. Mr. Piker was plainly ridiculing the commentator’s position. He was not endorsing it. The debate video remained visible behind him. Mr. Piker introduced the remarks with “He said,” laughed as he delivered them, and concluded by questioning the commentator’s argument. His viewers understood the sarcasm. Some laughed along. Others expressly described his comments as hyperbole. Still others predicted that someone would eventually remove the context and circulate the resulting footage as though Mr. Piker had been speaking sincerely. 6. That is precisely what happened. In August 2026, a 42-second video began circulating on social media that combined fragments of three separate Twitch broadcasts. The portions taken from Mr. Piker’s October 2024 stream had been cropped, shortened, and rearranged. The underlying debate was removed from view. So was the contemporaneous audience commentary. 7. The words “He said,” which identified the object of Mr. Piker’s ridicule, were omitted. Mr. Piker’s laughter and subsequent explanation were also removed. The resulting video portrayed sarcastic criticism of another as though it were an expression of Mr. Piker’s own beliefs. 8. On August 11, 2026, Mr. Jennings broadcast that false video on The Scott Jennings Show, misrepresenting the manipulated video as authentic. But Mr. Jennings did not stop at repeating someone else’s misleading edit. He added his own caption to the video, presented as a direct quotation from Mr. Piker: PIKER: “LET’S GO BACK TO A BETTER TIME WHEN LYNCHINGS WERE HAPPENING” — 🔗 Political streamer Hasan Piker has filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN commentator Scott Jennings in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking $72.5 million in damages over Jennings’ false claim that Piker advocated lynching Black Americans. The full complaint is linked below.