Nick Sandmann has fired his attorney, Lin Wood, who represented him in a series of defamation lawsuits against media outlets like CNN and The Washington Post.
The announcement: Sandmann, a former Covington Catholic High School student whose 2019 stare-down with a Native American elder was widely mischaracterized by the press, said in a court filing on Monday that he had ended his “lawyer-client relationship” with Wood and no longer wished to be represented by him.
- The 18-year-old will still be represented by attorney Todd McMurtry in pending suits against The New York Times, CBS, ABC News, Rolling Stone and other companies, Reuters reported.
Why? Wood said in a post shared to the social media app Telegram on Sunday that he expected Sandmann to “abandon” him over controversial statements Wood made about Vice President Mike Pence and others.
- Earlier this month, Sandmann appeared to criticize a social media post in which Wood suggested Pence would be executed by firing squad for supposedly betraying President Donald Trump by refusing to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
- Wood, who has been bullish in his insistence that the election was stolen from Trump by way of an elaborate scheme involving Democrats and Republicans, has since characterized his remarks about Pence as “rhetorical hyperbole.”
- Social media commenters have speculated as to whether Woods’ increasingly erratic rhetoric is a symptom of a mental decline.
Zooming out: The split between Sandmann and Wood reflects disagreement between Trump’s supporters regarding how far is too far when it comes to contesting his election loss as fraudulent.
