According to Marquardt’s testimony, CNN’s Chief National Security Correspondent Alex Marquardt repeatedly tried to find dust on U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young without finding any instances of wrongdoing. However, despite this, he still continued to pursue the supposedly disparaging story.
Young sued CNN after it published a document in November of 2021 that he claimed falsely claimed he had been attempting to flee Afghanistan for a “black business.” Importantly, a jury found Young “did not behave illegally or unlawfully”.
When Marquardt began his preliminary investigating on the evacuations in Afghanistan, he testified that he was actually “looking into” — as described in the text messages shown to judges involving him. Attorneys for Young made a situation that Marquardt attempted seven times to find proof that Young was involved in crime, but came up empty-handed.
For instance, Marquardt posed the question,” Have you heard of Zachary Young?” in one conversation with Mustafa Kazemi, who had been ordered to leave Afghanistan by an NGO.
” No I have not”, Kazemi responded.
Marquardt claimed that he “was often going to be digging into what Mr. Young was doing,” even though he even claimed that his statement focused solely on the “high rates” that “regular folks” were paying to be evacuated out of Afghanistan. Fresh claimed that he collaborated with businesses to evict individuals with sponsors rather than to seek funding from Afghans immediately. However, at least based on the information shown to the judge, Marquardt seemed determined to concentrate on Young.
For instance, Young’s lawyer presented judges with a text Marquardt sent in which he said he “zeroed in on” Young and another in which Marquardt said he was “watching” Young.
So why the emphasis on Young?
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Judge William Henry, who is overseeing the circumstance, previously found that CNN had a tale it wanted to promote and used Young as its victim, noting how, before talking to Young, Marquardt pitched the tale about Young using phrases like” shadowy black business”, “fraud” and “extortion”. Henry said that CNN did this despite having” no data” to back up its “black market” assertions.
” Then conveniently, a door was opened to receive data for the item when Young reached out to]CNN Reporter Katie Bo] Lillis”, Henry ruled, according to Fox News. ” After Fresh stopped cooperating with the analytical writers, Marquardt found his ‘ fall guy ‘ — Young”.
Marquardt added that he “didn’t hear whether people like Mr. Young was really offer” on Monday. Importantly, Young safely evacuated 22 women and one kid from Afghanistan for the businesses he worked for, but CNN did not report on that specific incident. Marquardt more testified that he didn’t care calling Audible— a buyer of Young’s — because “it didn’t make sense” to him “why Audible was operating in Afghanistan”.
Similarly, Marquardt also agreed Monday that he had” no evidence” that Young ever exploited any Afghans. Eventually, Marcardt attempted to make it known that he was referring to Young as “exploiting the position and not the people.”
The jury was also shown text messages between Marquardt and Jill Kornetsky, a CNN source, in which Marquardt said the final version of the story was “likely not as harsh about Young as]Kornetsky ] hoped” for, with Kornetsky responding:” Parasites can be hard to exterminate”.
” Yeah”, Marquardt agreed in the information exchange.
After Marquardt claimed that the tale wasn’t intended to “take down” Young and that he doesn’t “do struck pieces,” the message exchange was broadcast.
In subsequent message exchanges with jurors, Marquardt boasted that he would “nail this Zachary Young mf-cker” and that his story would be Young’s “funeral.”
Jurors will continue to hear from Marquardt during cross-examination.
The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman is a correspondent for elections. With a degree in international political economy, Brianna received her degree from Fordham University. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
