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Members of Congress occasionally face lawsuits that prove inconsequential, but NBC News reported on new litigation that’s worth keeping an eye on.
A Kansas man is suing Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., over social media posts that falsely identified him as an undocumented immigrant and one of the shooters in the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade that turned deadly last month.
If this story rings a bell, we discussed it about a month ago, in the aftermath of a shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration. While the authorities investigated the crime and made arrests, Burchett, a Republican congressman from a neighboring state, published a social media message that read, “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”
The text appeared alongside a photograph of a man in handcuffs.
Part of the problem with the message, of course, was the underlying effort to tie the deadly shooting to an anti-immigrant agenda. But more importantly, the congressman simply had his facts wrong: The shooter wasn’t an undocumented immigrant, and the man in the photograph accompanying Burchett’s tweet wasn’t a gunman.
After The Knoxville News Sentinel contacted the far-right lawmaker about his online message, Burchett deleted the item.
The Tennessean eventually said in a written statement, “It has come to my attention that in one of my previous posts, one of the shooters was identified as an illegal alien. This was based on multiple, incorrect news reports stating that. I have removed the post.”
That was a step in the right direction, though the congressman’s explanation wasn’t quite right, either: Reports from independent local media showed the man in question being briefly detained, but they did not identify him as either the shooter or an undocumented immigrant.
Or put another way, after Burchett made a claim that wasn’t true, he offered an explanation based on details that were also not true. Making matters worse, the Republican didn’t exactly have credibility to spare.
Denton Loudermill Jr., the local football fan who was falsely accused, scrambled to clear his name — he reportedly received death threats — and his lawyers are now alleging that their client sustained damages in excess of $75,000 as a result of a “false representation” of him appearing on Burchett’s social media account.
Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.