George Zimmerman is suing Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg over Trayvon Martin birthday tweets

George Zimmerman, who in 2013 was acquitted after being charged with murder for his fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, has filed a lawsuit against two Democratic presidential candidates seeking $265 million in damages. The complaint, reported Wednesday, accuses Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg of defamation.

At issue are tweets each candidate posted on what would have been Martin's 25th birthday in early February:

The posts were made "for political gain in misguided and malicious attempts to bolster their standings amongst African-American voters, all at Zimmerman's expense," the lawsuit filing claims, arguing the timing was merely "a pretext to demagogue and falsely brand Zimmerman as a white supremacist and racist to their millions of Twitter followers."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Zimmerman is already suing Martin's family, including his mother, whom Warren tagged in her tweet. That lawsuit seeks $100 million in damages and alleges falsified testimony.

Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.