Left-wing streamer Hasan Piker sues conservative CNN contributor Scott Jennings for $72.5M over ‘manipulated’ video

“All of Mr. Jennings’ accusations are false,” the suit says. “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.”

Jennings did not immediately reply to Moneywise’s request for comment about the lawsuit.

A contentious clip

Piker, known online as HasanAbi, is an American left-wing political commentator and Twitch streamer. In the lawsuit, he claims Jennings aired a manipulated video on the Aug. 11 episode of his podcast, which misrepresented his comments.

The comments, Piker says in the filing, came from an Oct. 29 2024 Twitch stream, where he mocked a Black conservative political commentator who blamed “woke DAs” for policies harming Black Americans. According to the suit, Piker sarcastically caricatured the commentator’s argument, asking, “Can we go back to a better time when lynchings were happening?”

The suit alleges the comments Jennings played were “cropped, shortened, and rearranged” and failed to identify the person Piker said he was mocking. According to the suit, Jennings did not personally create the video. It was first posted on X by the National Republican Senatorial Committee on Aug. 6, 2026.

But the suit alleges Jennings presented the manipulated comments as authentic, then added a caption reading “Piker: ‘Let’s go back to a better time when lynchings were happening.’”

“These were not expressions of disagreement with Mr. Piker’s politics. Nor were they rhetorical characterizations of an admittedly controversial commentator,” the lawsuit reads. “They were factual assertions about what Mr. Piker had said and advocated in his work. Each statement was demonstrably false.”

Piker is seeking at least $27.5 million in compensatory damages and $45 million in punitive damages.