Right-Wing Exports and Influencers Sued by Man Misidentified as Mass Shooter

A man who falsely accused of carrying out a deadly mass killing in Allen, Texas has sued several prominent right-wing influencers and conservative media outlets for defamation over their coverage of the massacre.

According HuffPost, first mentioned the lawsuitMauricio Garcia — a 36-year-old Texas resident — accused Fox News, TelevisaUnivision and Newsmax, along with influencers Tim Pool, Steven Crowder and Infowars host Owen Shroyer, among others, of “recklessly disregarding basic journalistic safeguards and publishing a photo of an innocent man, branding him as a neo-Nazi murderer in his local community and the nation at large.”

In May of last year, a gunman shot and killed eight shoppers at a mall in Allen, Texas. The alleged attacker, later identified as 33-year-old Mauricio Martinez Garcia, was a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who had been espousing racist and violent rhetoric online for months before carrying out the massacre.

As networks and online sleuths worked to identify the perpetrator, the lawsuit claims the defendants misidentified Garcia as Martinez Garcia for days, leading to harassment and death threats against an innocent man and his family.

The suit accuses Fox News of using “an image of innocent 36-year-old plaintiff Mauricio Garcia to portray the gunman,” in an article published on their website, and of refusing to retract the article after being notified of their error. In addition, Newsmax is accused of prominently displaying a false photo ID of Garcia on multiple broadcasts and accusing him of being a member of the “Puro Tango Blast” prison gang.

Garcia contends that conspiracy theories spread by right-wing influencers named in the lawsuit further compounded the unfair damage to his reputation. In the wake of the shooting, prominent conservatives promoted conspiracy theories that Martinez Garitsa's extremist ties and the massacre itself were “psychopathic.” The suit accuses Pool, Crowder and Shroyer of unfairly using his image in their discussion of the shooting — and in some cases linking him to their conspiracies.

Garcia's lawyers claim that Poole's media outfit, Timcast Media Group Inc., published several articles on its website using Garcia's image to portray the gunman.

“Timcast Media Group also posted an episode of Timcast IRL in which the video thumbnail used a photo of the Plaintiff. This image was visible not only to YouTube users who actually clicked on the video, but also to any user who saw the video in their feeds or in a recommendation sidebar,” the filing states.

Furthermore, “in the days that followed, Poole continued to dispute the event and tell his audience that the event was a psychedelic or organized government conspiracy. These allegations compounded the damage to Mr. Garcia.”

The filing makes similar accusations against Crowder, whose website used a photo of Garcia in an article arguing that “the media is refusing” to share photos of the killer.

This is by no means the first time that those affected by a mass shooting have sought accountability for the reckless coverage of the mass shootings that now plague American life. In 2022, InfoWars founder Alex Jones was ordered to pay more than $1.4 billion in restitution to the families of victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre for conspiring to cover up the shooting. The landmark case marked a drastic change in how third parties can respond to conspiracies that raise money from prominent media figures in the wake of tragedies.

“Garcia's only sin was having the same name as the shooter,” read a translated message Garcia's mother wrote to Univision at the time of the shooting. Univision is also accused of misusing Garcia's image to identify the shooter in its television coverage of the massacre.