Rumble files defamation lawsuit against Check My Ads co-founders

Rumble filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida against two co-founders of a purported watchdog organization. Rumble sued Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin, co-founders of Check My Ads, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation that routinely targets news outlets and platforms that do not adhere to their political worldview. Also named as defendants are John Does – numbers 1 through 10 – as yet-to-be-identified individuals who helped prepare and publish the defamatory information on their website. Rumble is represented by the law firm of Clare Locke. “As an unapologetically free-speech platform, Rumble’s mission is to provide all content creators and users a place to speak, listen, and debate freely, regardless of their political perspective. When anti-free speech zealots, whose self-declared mission is to shut Rumble down, lie to inflict intentional economic harm on our company, we have no choice but to hold them accountable,” said Rumble Chairman and CEO Chris Pavlovski. “Defamation is not free speech. We have filed this lawsuit because we have a responsibility to our shareholders, creators, users, and advertisers to act, and not sit idly by, when someone attacks our company’s reputation solely to silence differing political views. Our mission requires it.” The company said, “Jammi has a track record of launching pressure campaigns against advertisers on other outlets, including Fox News and Breitbart, and has worked with Media Matters, the hyper-partisan organization that also attempts to hound advertisers to stop spending on outlets that support the free exchange of ideas. The lawsuit alleges that Jammi and Atkin cannot tolerate Rumble’s content-neutral philosophy and want competing points of view to be silenced. As cited in the suit, the defendants accused Rumble of lying to its shareholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission about the company’s financial health and the source of its revenue. The suit also points out that the defendants knew their claim about Rumble’s reliance on Google Ad revenue for survival was false, and the defendants refused to correct their statements when Rumble demanded a retraction . In the suit, Rumble is seeking actual, presumed, and punitive damages, in addition to all costs and fees associated with the case. Rumble has asked the court to prohibit the defendants from repeating their false statements and for any other remedies deemed appropriate.”