Panama City, FL – Week Two of the $1 billion defamation trial against CNN kicked off Monday with the testimony of CNN chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, the architect of the allegedly defamatory report. The key moments from this time on the witness stand were when he refused to apologize to Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young, doubled down on the false assertions that Young was interested in taking money from Afghans, and getting pressed by plaintiff’s counsel on being war profiteer himself.
And perhaps most telling were the nine questions submitted to Marquardt by the jury, which appeared to suggest CNN was in trouble in their eyes.
Marquardt was under pressure from the get-go with plaintiff’s lead counsel Vel Freedman asking him if he had reached out to Audible and Bloomberg, two of Young’s clients, to fact-check if he had helped them.
"The story was not about Bloomberg and Audible," Marquardt testified. Reading from Marquardt’s deposition testimony, Freedman noted that Marquardt said: "I have not asked about the details [about the evacuations]...I did not want to know..."
Marquardt doubled down on that position on the stand. “The corporate evacuations were not something I was interested in,” Marquardt testified; corporate evacuations were all Young did.
On the lack of interest in following up with Young’s clients, Marquardt says he didn't reach out to Audible because "it didn't make sense" to him personally because he couldn't understand "why was Audible operating in Afghanistan" because they make audio books.
That confusion could have been cleared up with a simple call. A simple Google search by this author turned up a 2012 article from the Pulitzer Center about the importance of audio books in Afghanistan since most people there couldn’t read.
Marquardt admitted he did not reach out to Bloomberg the corporation either, instead he contacted former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's (D) personal aides.
A lack of remorse was a common theme throughout Marquardt’s testimony. He told the jury that "it's always the hope" that CNN would spread his story as widely as possible;” and if it was up to him, his offending report would have ran "every single hour" on CNN. He also said he stood by his original offending report and said he didn’t think CNN should have apologized to Young.
Marquardt admitted that he had evidence of actual scams being perpetrated against Afghans trying to get out, and admitted that they didn't include them in the story about Young:
"This was not something we did in this story [about Young]...At the end we didn't report about scams..."
Despite the court ruling on the facts of the case being that Young did not take money from Afghans, Marquardt falsely testifies that Young was charging "regular people" and not corporations.
In cross-examination, despite the evidence that Young's first questions to potential clients were about corporate sponsorships, Marquardt was still falsely claiming Young was looking for average people to pay him.
Marquardt was also questioned about something NewsBusters reported exclusively: his deposition admission of no evidence of wrongdoing by Young.
When asked about how he had "no evidence Mr. Young took advantage of an Afghan," Marquardt tried to weasel an answer about how Young was "taking advantage" of the situation in Afghanistan by "doing business."
Underpresser, Marquardt admitted he had "no evidence" of Mr. Young taking advantage of an Afghan. And when asked about how he had "no evidence" of Young exploiting an Afghan, Marquardt agreed. In an attempt to twist his own words, Marquardt pivoted to saying Young was "exploiting the situation and not the people."
Despite insisting that they never accused Young of scamming people, Marquardt was confronted with messages where he claimed what Young was doing was "a scam" "100 percent." He tried to argue that there was only a possibility of a scam, but Freedman points out there was no ambiguity, he believed it "100 percent."
When pressed on all his cursing about Young in private messages, Maquardt didn’t really have any good answers. When he was confronted with a message where he agreed that Young had “a punchable face,” Marquardt claimed the "right" he wrote was not him agreeing that Young had a "punchable face" but was him being “agreeable” with a colleague.
Despite all the evidence of CNN reporters cursing Young, Marquardt insisted no one at CNN "hated" Young. "That's correct" was Marquardt's response to questions about how CNN did not tell Young he was a subject of a report until hours before it aired.
Marquardt declared that he was not angry when Young messaged him back (the first time they spoke ever, 2 hours before the segment ran). He was immediately confronted with his text to an editor which read "Fucking Young just texted.” Marquardt was asked to read the message out loud but was hesitant because he didn’t want to curse in court; Freedman told Marquardt he's the one who wrote it.
In cross-examination, Marquardt said he wanted the jury to see the messages of him and his colleagues cursing out Young because it was evidence of all the "research" he did for the story.
Marquardt claimed he didn't hold "personal animosity" against Young, despite cursing him out in private messages. "You take your personal feelings and you put them aside. You just report the facts," the CNN reporter asserted.
The two conflicting gripes Marquardt had with Young were about how Young was running his business in terms of evacuations. Firstly, he wanted to know how Young "could justify" charging the prices he was citing; his second issue was that Young was only working with corporately sponsored Afghans (the only ones who could afford it).
Throughout different points in his testimony, Marquardt brought up his disgust at Young’s business turning a “profit” for his network putting their lives on the line to get people out.
Marquardt touted one instance of a man who got out of Afghanistan "for free" because an NGO helped get him out. But that was essentially the same thing that was happening with the people Young evacuated. The people in-country got out for free and corporations paid for them.
He repeatedly talked about how CNN’s questions to Young were about trying to get to the bottom of how he could “justify” his prices, but at no point did Marquardt state what the correct price was. That didn’t stop him from suggesting it was morally wrong for Young to make money off the evacuations.
He seemed to be unaware that the jury pool was asked during selection if they thought it was wrong for a security contractor to make such money. No one raised their hand.
Things got contentious when Freedman’s redirect put extra focus on Marquardt and war correspondents essentially being war profiteers in their own way. Marquardt argued it was suspicious that Young didn't want to say how much money he made from evacuations, but when asked if he felt comfortable saying how much his salary was, CNN’s lead counsel Axelrod objected and there was no answer.
Hand-written juror questions were something unique in Florida’s court system and could be a way for counsel to judge where the jury was at. But if some of the questions the six jurors and one alternate (one juror called in sick) asked Marquardt were any indication, CNN wasn’t in a good place.
As read by Judge Willaim Scott Henry:
Why, after several examples of Mr. Young cut off communication with people without [corporate] funds, did you still feel as if he was still exploiting Afghans? … Do you and your colleagues believe that Mr. Young should have evacuated anyone who requested help without charging? … How do you feel knowing that Mr. Young can no longer work in the space that he is trained on as a result of your piece?
Further in redirect, Marquardt says he was "proud" of his story and was "not sorry" for it.
