CNN‘s Alexander Marquardt took the stand in a Florida defamation trial Monday, defending his 2021 report that a security consultant sought exorbitant fees in what amounted to a black market to evacuate Afghans during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2001.
The consultant, Zachary Young, then sued the network for defamation, claiming his reputation was destroyed and he lost work because of it. The network has defended the report as an accurate account of what was happening, as Afghans were in desperate efforts to find a way out as the Taliban returned to power.
During Marquardt’s daylong testimony, Young’s attorney, Devin Freedman, tried to establish that the correspondent and the network had animus against Young and targeted him specifically. To collect punitive damages in the case, Young must show that the network acted with actual malice.
Multiple times, Freedman showed Marquardt text messages with another CNN employee from November 1, 2021, 10 days before the story ran, in which the CNN correspondent wrote that “we gonna nail this Zachary Young mf—er.”
Freedman noted that at the time the message was written, no one at the network had actually communicated with Young.
“I had seen other communications,” Marquardt said.
“You had not communicated with Zachary Young as of this date,” Freedman responded.
“Not until 10 days later,” Marquardt said.
“You nonetheless decided he was a motherf—er.”
Marquardt replied, “From what I had seen in his communications with a lot of people …. I could tell that there were some unsavory traits, shall we say. He was telling a woman he didn’t know that she was spiteful. He told her to f-off. He told someone else that had a person they were trying to get out of the country to run for the border and see how far they get. I knew he had a shifting story on his actual role with the CIA. I saw that he was cutting people off as soon as he found out that they couldn’t afford to pay the money.”
The attorney pressed Marquardt on the comment that he would “nail” Young.
“That’s shorthand for highlighting, exposing what he was doing, his activities and what others like him were doing,” Marquardt replied.
“Have you heard an expression ‘nail him to the cross’?” Freedman asked. “You were going to nail him to the cross?”
“No, I didn’t say that. … At the end of the day, our report said nothing about him doing anything illegal,” Marquardt said. “It didn’t say anything beyond what we had learned about him and what he himself had told us. Eventually we did talk to him, and we used his own words in our report. Everything that was in the report was completely factual.”
The segment from Marquardt was aired on CNN on November 11, 2021, and re-aired three times. Links to the segments also were posted on social media, and a digital article was posted on November 13.
In one instance, Young’s image appeared on screen with the chyron, “Afghans trying to flee Taliban face black markets, exorbitant fees, no guarantee of safety or success.”
The term “black market” will be a crucial question for the jury. In an earlier decision, Judge William Henry ruled that the jury would have to decide if the segment’s references to a “black market” “meant illegal or criminal.”
On the stand, Marquardt repeatedly defended the report as well as the use of the term “black market,” even though it appeared in a chyron and not the actual story.
He said that as the story was being prepared for air, there was an email suggesting that the term “black market” go through “the triad,” the CNN term for its internal fact-checking review. But he said that the term accurately described the chaotic situation at the time, when many Afghans were left with few options to get out of the country.
In response to a question from the jury, Marquardt also defended singling out Young in the report, even though “it wasn’t just [Young] who was exploiting Afghans. It was others who were exploiting the situation, and I believe that he was attempting to exploit Afghans. Of course, I didn’t see all the conversations that he had with other people. I believe that he was attempting to exploit the situation, take advantage of their desperation, to get the amounts of money that he was asking for.”
Given that the story was just three minutes long, Marquardt said, Young was “the best example to illustrate” what was going on in Afghanistan at the time when it came to getting people out.
Young had testified that he never took money from Afghans, but was attempting to line up corporations and nonprofits to pay for the evacuations.
Marquardt told the jury that they “didn’t find any evidence” that Young had taken money from Afghans themselves. But he also said that Young would be evasive when asked about the five-figure sums he was charging, and the network never got an answer as to whether they were to pay for costs or were to maximize his profit.
“The story was about the high prices they were facing, that they were being asked to pay,” Marquardt said. “That is completely accurate, and that is what went into the story.”
He added, “There were plenty of people doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, not putting the pressure on people to find the money to save their own lives and to save the lives of their children. But Mr. Young was doing that.”
He also said that the story did not talk about Young profiting “off these desperate Afghans, though he now know he did.”
Freedman tried to compare Young work of getting Afghans out for payment to Marquardt’s job in reporting on a war zone, suggesting that the CNN correspondent was a “hypocrite.”
“So the only difference between you and my client is that he saved lives and you did not, correct?” Freedman asked.
“No, that’s incorrect,” Marquardt said.
After the story aired and Young’s attorneys issued legal threats, CNN issued an apology. In a segment on The Lead with Jake Tapper on March 25, 2022, the anchor told viewers that “the use of the term ‘black market’ in the story was in error. The story included reporting on Zachary Young, a private operator who had been contacted by family members of Afghans trying to flee the country. We didn’t mean to suggest that Mr. Young participated in the black market. We regret the error and to Mr. Young, we apologize.”
Marquardt said that he didn’t think the network had to issue an apology, but he wasn’t consulted on the language used.
“I think that CNN had reasons for issuing that apology,” he said. “I was fine that they did it. But I don’t think it was for a correction for the reporting I had done.”
The trial is taking place in Panama City, FL, a deep red portion of the state that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. At the outset of Marquardt’s testimony, Freedman parroted one of Trump’s catch phrases about the network.
“You’ve heard CNN called fake news before, have you not?” Freedman asked Marquardt.
“I’ve heard that said,” Marquardt replied.
“Do you agree with that characterization?”
“No,” Marquardt said.