Military pilot Jo Ellis said she had to hire private armed security for her family because of the false claims, which went viral on social media.

Military pilot Jo Ellis said she had to hire private armed security for her family because of the false claims, which went viral on social media.

A transgender military pilot filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday against a conservative influencer who falsely claimed on social media that she was flying the helicopter that collided with a commercial jet near Reagan National Airport in January, killing 67 people.

“I want to hold this person accountable for what they did to me,” Jo Ellis, a pilot who has served more than 15 years in the Virginia Army National Guard, said in a statement to NBC News. “It’s become too common that people can say horrible things about someone, profit at their expense, and get away with it.”

On Jan. 30, less than 24 hours after the crash, conservative influencer Matt Wallace, who has 2.2 million followers on the social media platform X, shared a post from another account he operates stating that the helicopter pilot was transgender, according to the lawsuit. Wallace included a photo of Ellis, and the post went viral, the lawsuit states.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
    0·
    2 days ago

    why do we let these conservative “influencers” sleep at night? I hope someone sets his house on fire shoots him when he runs out. Let him die sobbing in a pool of his blood and piss, confused and alone.

    • rational_lib@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 days ago

      Because it’s just going to make them more popular. One can argue that the failed assassination of Trump was actually key to his victory. Or if that’s not clear enough, look at what happened with Charlie Hebdo - it just made muslims look petty and violent to the point where most people ended up siding with the paper that was bullying a religious minority in the end.

      Losing a lawsuit, meanwhile, makes them unpopular and poor at the same time.

      • PurpleTentacle@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 days ago

        the paper that was bullying a religious minority than recognize their concerns

        Shut the fuck up with your disgusting justification.

        Islam is the second most popular religion in France after Catholicism (11% vs 25% in 2020 and things have almost certainly shifted further in favor of Islam since).

        This is how Charlie Hebdo presents and presented the Catholic majority:

        https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=charlie+hebdo+catholiques

        Charlie Hebdo’s crime wasn’t “bullying a minority”, their crime was treating France’s second strongest religious group no different than their strongest.

        • rational_lib@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 day ago

          Shut the fuck up with your disgusting justification.

          I’m confused as to why you are getting so many upvotes because either though misreading or misplaced focus, you only replied to one half of one sentence of my reply, constructing an alternate reality in which my point was the opposite of what it actually was. And to be blunt, both the reply and the upvotes reflects so much of the knee-jerk hyperemotionalism in online debates.

          As for the rest, I think we can all acknowledge that people in general will take more offense to a paper insulting a powerless minority than the powerful majority. But in this case they didn’t, hence my point that violence is counterproductive to a cause, which you seem to think was the opposite point.