The attorney for the Covington Catholic High School student involved in a Washington, DC, run-in with a Native American elder accused billionaire Jeff Bezos of a “double standard” between his paper’s coverage of his client’s experience and Bezos’s criticism of the National Enquirer.
Bezos, owner of the Washington Post and CEO of the Amazon empire, “has used media to express his outrage over reporting about him,” tweeted high-profile libel attorney L. Lin Wood, who is representing 16-year-old Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann.
Last week, Bezos penned a bombshell piece for the website Medium, in which he accused the Enquirer of blackmailing him with purported nude selfies and racy text messages to his mistress, Lauren Sanchez.
Bezos alleged that the Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., threatened to run the scandalous material unless the Washington Post dropped an investigation into the Enquirer’s recent exposure of Bezos’s affair and divorce.
“Yet, Mr. Bezos has not publicly uttered one word about the rush by The Washington Post to falsely accuse & defame Nick Sandmann, a 16-year-old,” Wood continued. “The double standard must end.”
Sandmann was widely vilified in the media and online last month after the release of a viral video that showed the Kentucky high school junior, wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap, staring down a Native American war vet on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during a class trip.
A longer version of the video later released cast the incident in a new light, suggesting that it was actually the group of Native American activists that escalated the encounter.