(ProsperNews.net) – A court dismissed a $25 million lawsuit against actor Alec Baldwin for calling a woman an “insurrectionist” online. Judge Edgardo Ramos threw out the lawsuit saying that the plaintiffs Jiennah McCollum, widow of Marine Lance Corporal Rylee J. McCollum, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2021, as well as the soldier’s sisters Roice and Cheyenne McCollum, had made themselves public figures connected to the events of January 6, 2021, because of photos of their attendance on social media sites.
The judge found that Baldwin’s most inflammatory statements were made in private, and the plaintiffs had not established any malice on his part.
The story dates back to August 26, 2021, when Lance Corporal Rylee J. McCollum died in a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. His wife Jiennah was pregnant at the time and made television appearances to commemorate him. A GoFundMe fundraiser was established to help Jiennah and her unborn child, to which Mr. Baldwin donated $5,000.
On January 6, 2021, Rylee’s sister Roice – a Trump supporter – attended Capitol Hill protests but did not participate in the riots and was cleared of wrongdoing by the FBI. However, in January 2022, Alec Baldwin recognized McCollum in photos taken at Capitol Hill and took to his Instagram account to ask her if she was a member of the family he had donated $5,000 to. She confirmed she was, and the two parties engaged in a private discussion.
During the offline conversation, Baldwin told McCollum that her actions “resulted in the unlawful destruction of government property, the death of a law enforcement officer, an assault on the certification of the presidential election.” In a public post, the actor described how he donated to the family of a dead soldier, only to find that his sister was an “insurrectionist.”
Widow Jiennah and sisters Roice and Cheyenne sued Mr. Baldwin for defamation weeks later. Roice McCollum alleged she received threats and hateful messages in response to Baldwin’s post.
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