In their rush to identify the perpetrator of the tragic mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets in Texas last May, several right-wing media outlets, including Fox News and Newsmax, carelessly smeared an innocent man, branding him a "neo-Nazi murderer" for the entire nation to see, according to a lawsuit filed in Travis County, Texas.
The lawsuit alleges the media outlets falsely identified Mauricio Garcia as the perpetrator of even though the actual shooter was a 33-year-old man, also named Mauricio Garcia who was a neo-Nazi.
In the lawsuit, Garcia says the consequences of this reckless "journalism" have been utterly devastating. The 36-year-old is now suffering from "a severe degree of mental stress, anguish, fear, personal embarrassment, and psychological harm" – all because media behemoths like Fox News, Newsmax, and TelevisaUnivision, far-right podcasters like Tim Pool and Steven Crowder, and Infowars host Owen Shroyer decided to forgo "elementary journalistic precautions" and run with unverified information.
Garcia, who is seeking $1 million, says his life has been "disrupted" by the avalanche of death threats and hatred that followed the alleged reckless actions, compounded by their failures to issue proper retractions.
As reported in Huffington Post:
Despite evidence of the gunman's neo-Nazi beliefs, many on the right — including Musk — dismissed the idea that the shooting could've been motivated by right-wing extremism, instead suggesting it was a government conspiracy.
One of those people was Tim Pool, a beanie-wearing podcaster who has hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes and right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos on his show.
When discussing the shooter's social media profile on his program, "Timcast IRL," Pool said: "You see, here's where we get into the psyop," according to the lawsuit.
"No one knows if this Russian social media profile is actually — actually belongs to this guy," Pool said, the suit alleges. "Now the photos that are coming out, … they don't show his face."
Pool added that he didn't want to show photos of the potential shooter "considering the sensitive nature of these things," the lawsuit says. But Pool's media group had already published a photo of a different man — the plaintiff Garcia — on its website, according to the suit.
Previously: Vice`s video about white supremacists in Charlottesville
