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A security consultant testified in the second day of his defamation trial against CNN, as his attorney ran through a series of text messages with the network reporters.
Zachary Young claims that he was defamed by a a false 2021 report that tarred him with exploiting Afghan family members by charging exorbitant fees to get them out of the country during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal.
On the stand today, Young testified about his interactions with CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis on Nov. 3, 2021. Young said that he reached out to the network because he thought they needed help in evacuation operations from Afghanistan. But Lillis told him that she was actually working :on some reporting related to ongoing efforts to help get at-risk Afghans out of the country and your name came up in a couple of conversations recently.” He said that he would cooperate with the story but did not want to be named.
“I didn’t ask for anything in return except to not be named in the story,” Young told jurors in the Florida courtroom.
Lillis, though, pressed him to talk to her on the phone, and wrote, “Our understanding is you’re asking for $75,000 for people to Pakistan and around $15,000 for a single person to the UAE. That seems exorbitant for folks who clearly don’t have that kind of money.”
Young, though, texted that “Pricing always depends on local resource availability at any given time in a highly unstable environment. No Afghan is expected to pay for evacuation costs. None would ever be able to.”
He told the jury that what he was doing was working with people who had sponsors or with corporations that had the resources to support the evacuations. Lillis pressed him on evacuation costs and wrote, “How does the math work?” She wrote, “We’re not in any rish. Getting it right is why I’m talking to you.” He then texted to Lillis, “No, I can’t, because I’m not on the ground and don’t understand the challenges. When I find an option that works, I try to find candidates.
Young said that he was given only two hours to respond to the story when another reporter, Alexander Marquardt, later reached out to him. In a text message, Young wrote back, “That’s definitely not a realistic deadline. In any case, I can tell you for sure, some of your facts/assertions for [sic] are not accurate, and if they are published, I will seek legal damages.” Marquardt said that he had reached out to him via phone and LinkedIn the week before.
The segment from Marquardt was aired on CNN on Nov. 11, 2021, and re-aired three times. Links to the segments also were posted on social media, and a digital article was posted on Nov. 13.
Young claims that he and his company, Nemex Enterprises, were defamed by the report. In one instance, Young’s image appeared on screen with the chyron, “Afghans trying to flee Taliban face black markets, exorbitant fees, no guarantee of safety or success.”
Before the trial, Judge William Henry ruled that the jury would have to decide if the segment’s references to a “black market” “meant illegal or criminal.”
The judge ruled that Young was a private individual, but noted that a jury would still have to determine whether the network acted with “actual” malice for the purpose of determining whether Young is entitled to punitive damages.
Henry also ruled that CNN “does not have evidence” that Young took payments from Afghans.
CNN’s attorney, David Axelrod, no relation to the commentator, said in his opening statement on Tuesday that the stories were “carefully researched. They were carefully written, and many experienced journalists at CNN put eyes on these stories.”
“Neither story accused Mr. Young of doing anything illegal. Indeed, the reporting on Young truthfully reported his own public advertisements on LinkedIn…. They were almost all his own words.” He also told jurors that Young would present “no witness, other than himself, who will testify that they interpreted the stories in the way that Mr. Young claims that he did.”
He also said that Young would present “no witness that would testify about his reputation before the CNN publication or afterwards.”
As Young’s attorneys issued legal threats, CNN aired a segment on The Lead with Jake Tapper on March 25, 2022, in which the anchor told viewers that “the use of the term ‘black market’ in the story was in error. The story included reporting on Zachary Young, a private operator who had been contacted by family members of Afghans trying to flee the country. We didn’t mean to suggest that Mr. Young participated in the black market. We regret the error and to Mr. Young, we apologize.”
In his opening statement, Axelrod said that CNN “did try to learn as much as possible from Mr. Young as they could,” but “it became very clear that Mr. Young was going to give limited, false information to CNN and that the end he was just trying to stonewall the story.”
Axelrod also said that, about a month after the segment aired and Young was pursuing legal action, he took screen shots of messages that would be helpful in his case, but deleted the rest.
