Actor Alec Baldwin is being sued for defamation and negligence by the family of a fallen Marine after comments he made about a family members present at the United States Capitol on January 6th 2021. A lawsuit was filed in the US District Court of Wyoming last week.
The sisters and widow of Lance Corporal Rylee J. McCollum, who died on August 26, 2021, during the suicide bomber attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, are asking for $25 million plus legal fees after suffering severe distress following Baldwin’s comments, according to the court filing.
After McCollum’s death a GoFundMe was created for his widow and soon to be son. According to court documents Alec Baldwin heard about the GoFundMe account and sent a check for 5,000 dollars as a “tribute to a fallen soldier.”
On january 3rd Roice McCollum Rylee’s sister posted a picture of a crowd of demonstrators at the Washington Monument on her personal Instagram account. This post was ahead of the 1 year anniversary of the January 6th attack in which a demonstration was expected.
When actor Alec Baldwin saw Royce’s post ahead of the one year anniversary he began to message her on Instagram according to the lawsuit. In the lawsuit it says Baldwin sent her a message saying “When I sent the $ for your late brother, out of real respect for his service to this country, I didn’t know you were a January 6th rioter,”
Roice was never arrested, detained, charged with or convicted of any crime associated with her attendance at the January 6 2021 attack according to the lawsuit.
Roice responded to Baldwin’s message according to the lawsuit saying “Protesting is perfectly legal in the country and I’ve already had my sit down with the FBI.”
Baldwin responded to that message saying “I don’t think so. Your activities resulted in the unlawful destruction of government property, the death of a law enforcement officer, and an assault on the certification of the presidential election. I reposted your photo. Good luck.”
In the lawsuit it alleges that within minutes of Baldwin commenting in her feed she started recieving hostile, aggressive, hateful messages from Baldwin’s fans.
Baldwin’s Instagram post that he later deleted said, “Lots of Trumpsters chiming in here with the current cry that the attack on the Capitol was a protest, (a more peaceful form of which got a lot of other protestors imprisoned) and an exercise in democracy. That’s bullsh*t.” His post continued and said, “I did some research. I found, on IG, that this woman [Roice McCollum] is the brother of one of the men who was killed,” in Kabul Afghanistan.
The suit says Baldwin, “unequivocally understood that by forwarding Roice’s Instagram feed to 2.4 million like-minded followers and posting his commentary would result in the onslaught of threats and hatred that it did.”
This is not the only legal trouble that Alec Baldwin has found himself in lately. Last month Baldwin turned over his cell phone to law enforcement officials. The reason Baldwin had to turn over his cell phone is part of the investigation into the fatal shooting on the set of “Rust.” Baldwin is also being sued by crew members on the set due to negligence.
