Clock-Boy Ahmed Mohammed is in the news again. His family sued his school district, the school principal, and city officials for discrimination over his “treatment” after he brought a hoax bomb (sorry, a clock) to school. A Federal judge in Northern Texas has thrown out the case.
On Thursday, Judge Sam Lindsay of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs had failed to prove officials discriminated against Mohamed.
Ahmed, the younger brother of a sister punished by the same school for a hoax bomb threat, disassembled an old Radio Shack clock, tossed the guts in a pencil box, and brought it to school. The resulting press produced cries of discrimination, as idiots– social media trolls, all the way up to President Obama–went with the “misunderstood Muslim Jimmy Neutron” narrative. And that appears to have been the point.
I continue to believe they were fishing for a discrimination case in the shadow of a sympathetic administration and Department of Justice. But they went fishing in the wrong watering hole. Losing the discrimination case is the least of their woes.
As reported here back in January, the lawsuits against Glen Beck, Fox Media, Ben Shapiro, and others were all filed in Texas, which has some bitchin’ anti-SLAPP laws. Victims of frivolous lawsuits can request that their accusers pay their legal fees, and the legal system is granting those requests.
(POPEHAT) Mohamed’s opposition was scattered and perfunctory. It did a very poor job of addressing the crucial distinction between protected opinion and potentially defamatory fact, devoting a few pages of poor argument unsupported by legal authority. So it is not surprising that the court granted Fox and [correspondent Ben] Ferguson’s motion in full and awarded more than $80,000 in fees to Fox and Ferguson…
They will all collect compensation for court and legal costs from the Mohammed family, all because the accusers thought (were convinced by lawyers, activists, maybe even a US President) that they could get around the first amendment protections afforded to the press and leverage the fawning progressive press into a payday.
An idea the could cost them half a million before all the bills are paid.
Sadly, the media that made them by fishing for evidence to back their false narratives will not be held to account for that cost. A media that continues to propagate the fraud that Clockhmed is an oppressed hobbyist who just built a clock. He is a teenage huckster who lied to his teachers, the press, the President, and the world. And now his enabling family is paying the price.
I hope he kept it. The clock, I mean. It did, after all, cost his family a fortune.
