On Monday, Alex Marquardt, CNN Senior Intelligence Correspondent and frequent fill-in anchor at the network, announced that he was leaving his position. Speculation was immediately emerging that this was in connection to the defamation lawsuit brought against CNN, where a jury found the news network liable for defamation and ruled they had to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages. Now, indications are that Marquardt was in fact let go as a result of the suit.
CNN was sued by Navy veteran Zachary Young over a report on Young’s work as an extraction expert who facilitated the safe release of people from Afghanistan. CNN chose to frame Young’s work as illegal black market activities where he was extorting people to have them safely escape the nation as it fell into Taliban rule. The jury ruled CNN acted errantly and with malice in its false presentation, awarding Young with significant compensatory damages, with the network then negotiating undisclosed punitive compensation.
Marquardt was the reporter on those disputed reports, which ran on programs hosted by Jake Tapper, as well as others at the network.
