Jordan Chariton, a former reporter for the Young Turks, has filed a lawsuit against the Huffington Post for $23.5 million over their publishing of what he says were false sexual assault allegations.
Chariton, 31, was the target of a piece published in November entitled, “Jordan Chariton Accused by Former Employees of Sexual Abuse, Harassment” by HuffPost Contributor Christian Chiakulas.
The Huffington Post removed the story one day after publication, but refused to issue a retraction.
“HuffPo not only allowed career crippling defamation against me but they actively promoted it and held it up as news,” Chariton told the Gateway Pundit.
The story focused on an incident in May, when Carly Hammond, who was married, was with Chariton and several other friends in a hotel room engaging in group sexual acts. The article stated in the affirmative that he had “raped” her.
“I have written statements from the other two people in the room confirming that they heard me ask the woman receiving oral sex if she was Ok and if I could approach her intimately- and most importantly, heard her consent. During the night we had a few beers, but no one was drunk,” Chariton wrote of the encounter. The two eventually paired off where intimate acts continued, but he maintains there was no sexual penetration.
Hammond later broke off her marriage and flew to New York to again be with Chariton.
“Despite Mr. Chariton’s warnings to Miss Hammond to not throw away her marriage by flying to New York to be with him. Miss Hammond decided to immediately break off her marriage and flew across the country to be with Mr. Chariton. Miss Hammond would later admit to having consensual sex repeatedly with Mr. Chariton over the course of a week in New York before having second thoughts about her marriage,” the complaint, obtained by the Gateway Pundit, states.
Chiakulas told ShadowProof in November that there were “six accusers,” but that he did not know their names or identities. In an interview in December with H.A. Goodman, he claimed that Hammond was the only accuser.
The complaint alleges that the Huffington Post article did not disclose that it was the product of a Facebook discussion group with multiple people that had been conspiring to get Chariton fired. Additionally, Chiakulas did not seek comment from the two witnesses who were in the room during the alleged assault — both of whom have corroborated the claim that he had not sexually assaulted anyone and that there was affirmative consent.
The Huffington Post piece also failed to mention that Hammond, along with Zee Cohen, were planning to launch an news outlet called Staunch that would be direct competition to Chariton’s website, Truth Against the Machine.
In text exchanges, Zee told Chariton that they “knew she made it up,” but continued to help spread the claims because “I was mad that u fired me”(sic).
“Mr. Chiakulas did not disclose that he was not a neutral reporter having coached one co-conspirator in the Facebook group who had a non-sexual harassment story to change her narrative ‘because, we don’t want this to be a ‘Jordan Chariton is terrible’ story, we want it to be a ‘Jordan Chariton is a sexual predator story,’” the complaint alleges.
The complaint, filed in the New York Supreme Court, is seeking damages for libel per se, general defamation, libel by implication, and negligent injury to reputation.
When asked by the Gateway Pundit if he believes that Chariton will win, his lawyer Bill Moran stated, “he’s innocent. He better.”
“One thing that was particularly obscene is that HuffPost ‘promoted’ it after an editor viewed it pushing it into the top of Google searches and making it even come up as news when the original piece smearing him clearly was not the product or a journalistic process,” Moran explained. “HuffPost took a hoax, ran it all over town, and dressed it up as though it is news.”
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