The firm behind NRATV sued one of its former hosts on Friday in federal court in Texas, accusing him of lying about how few people watched the far right-wing TV channel.
The lawsuit was filed by Oklahoma City-based ad firm Ackerman McQueen against Grant Stinchfield, an NRATV host who once called for North Korea to attack Sacramento.
NRATV shut down in June after the National Rifle Association, which had contracted with Ackerman to run the TV channel, chose to end production at the network. The move came amid rancorous infighting between the NRA and its longtime ad vendor, with both accusing the other of gross mismanagement and corruption.
Some allegations have gone directly to the spending habits of NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre.
The Texas federal lawsuit accused Stinchfield of defaming NRATV by releasing an affidavit in which he claimed that NRATV viewership metrics had been doctored to obscure “the whole story of how few actual live viewers we had.”
In the lawsuit, Ackerman accused Stinchfield of “align[ing] himself with the NRA and LaPierre and their smear campaign against NRATV.”
“In truth, the analytics are not only legitimate, they are impressive,” Ackerman averred.
Ackerman also wrote that the affidavit has yet to appear in any court proceeding. Rather, the company said, it has only been released to the media, which it describes as part of an attempt “to deflect attention from the civil investigation by the New York State Attorney General into the NRA’s and LaPierre’s spending habits, which place LaPierre’s livelihood and the NRA’s nonprofit tax-exempt status in jeopardy.”
Ackerman did not specify any amount of damages sought in the lawsuit.
