LIV Golf’s Patrick Reed Threatens CNN With $450 Million Suit Over Jake Tapper Segment — CNN Calls Threat ‘Completely Frivolous’
Golfer Patrick Reed has threatened to sue CNN after Jake Tapper and sportscaster Bob Costas discussed the highly controversial LIV Golf Tour on The Lead With Jake Tapper.
LIV Golf has been in the spotlight since it started in 2022. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund supports the startup league financially.
On Thursday, Costas joined Tapper’s CNN show and the two discussed LIV Golf. Neither Tapper nor Costas mentioned Reed by name, but the golfer’s lawyers at Klayman’s Law Group allege the two made defamatory comments about the 2018 Masters champion.
In a letter obtained by Golf Monthly on Tuesday, Reed’s lawyers wrote:
Late last week, CNN and Jake Tapper, along with CNN’s sports reporter Bob Costas aired a highly defamatory piece titled “The Court Fight Between PGA Tour and LIV Golf Escalates as the Saudi-backed LIV Tries to Avoid Handing Over Information.”
This widely viewed broadcast in Florida, the nation and internationally, was not only defamatory but also designed to incite ridicule, hatred and violence against LIV Golf players, such as my client Patrick Reed, a world champion professional golfer, by publishing that he takes “blood money” from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy twenty-two (22) years ago.
The article also, at a minimum, falsely implies that he using a lawsuit, of which he is not even a party, to dig up data, track down, intimidate and harass 9/11 victim families. The broadcast republished with reckless disregard for the truth, a prior Bloomberg article, and references the Bloomberg article in the broadcast.
Mr. Reed is not a taker of “blood money,” as he simply plays on a golf tour financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which also owns large shares in a myriad of American companies such as Disney, Boeing, J.P Morgan Chase, Amazon, Blackrock Inc., Microsoft and many others. Indeed, many sponsors of the PGA Tour benefit from this investment fund, and PGA Tour players have recently been granted releases by the PGA Tour to play in the Saudi International Golf Tournament in Jeddah, on February 2-5 2023, also financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Aramco, the oil company owned by the government of Saudi Arabia, also sponsors and finances a number of LPGA events. Are you accusing female professional golfers of also taking blood money?
Tapper, Costas and CNN are therefore on notice that if an on air public apology is not immediately made to Mr. Reed and the broadcast removed and retracted from CNN’s websites, streaming services and other forms of publication, in order to mitigate the damage which they have caused, as well as discipline meted out to Tapper and Costas, we reserve the right after five (5) days to sue Tapper, Costas and CNN pursuant to Florida Statute 77.01 for damages well in excess of $450,000,000 dollars which includes compensatory, actual, special, and punitive damages.
Reed sued The Golf Channel and its analyst Brandel Chamblee, but a judge dismissed the case on Friday.
Like Reed, former PGA Golfers Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, and Brooks Koepka joined LIV Golf.
UPDATE 3:50 pm ET: CNN senior vice president Matt Dornic provided a statement to Mediaite calling the lawsuit threat “frivolous” and stating that the network would “aggressively defend its reporting”:
This would be a completely frivolous lawsuit, whose aim is to chill free speech and intimidate journalists from covering important stories about the Saudi government and the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament. CNN will aggressively defend its reporting, which did not even mention the plaintiff in its coverage.
Watch the segment above via CNN.
