- Sharpton rejects demands to retract statements about Nolan Wells’ death, says he will continue seeking answers.
- Lawsuit threat aims to stop questions, but Sharpton sees it as chance to force disclosure of evidence.
- Nolan Wells’ parents asked Sharpton to support them, and he vows to stand by them until they get answers.
If Warren Hudson, Jax Pitalo and Morgan Seymour were hoping a defamation threat would make Rev. Al Sharpton suddenly clutch his pearls, apologize and disappear, they may want to ask for a refund on that legal strategy.
As BOSSIP previously reported, three friends of Nolan Wells are threatening to sue several people over comments they claim suggested they could have been involved in the 18-year-old’s mysterious death and the latest is the good reverend. But Sharpton apparently has no interest in playing the “please stop asking reasonable questions about what happened the day Nolan Wells died” game. According to TMZ, the reverend has clapped back, calling the threatened lawsuit “meritless” and making it clear he has no intention of retracting statements he says he never made.
“This is not going to distract us from the question that brought us here: What happened to Nolan Wells?” Sharpton said. “His parents buried their 18-year-old son without knowing how or why he died. They asked me to stand with them, and I will continue to stand with them until they get the answers they deserve.”
The dispute stems from Sharpton publicly questioning what happened to Wells, whose body was discovered on Horn Island after he disappeared during a Fourth of July outing. The official cause and manner of death remain unresolved, leaving plenty of unanswered questions surrounding the teenager’s final hours.
Hudson, Pitalo and Seymour apparently believe those reasonable questions amount to defamation. Their attorneys sent Sharpton a letter accusing him of implying the trio had something to do with Nolan’s death or were withholding information. The men are demanding an apology and retraction.
Because nothing says “we definitely want everyone to stop talking about this” quite like threatening to drag the person asking questions into court.
Sharpton and his attorneys argued that the demand letter fails to identify an actual defamatory statement and noted that Sharpton was raising questions already raised publicly by Nolan’s own mother. And Sharpton isn’t merely refusing to back down. He says he welcomes the lawsuit because litigation could force people who were with Nolan before his death to answer questions under oath, undergo discovery and produce evidence.
That creates an awkward little problem for the lawsuit strategy. If the goal is really to clear their names and establish the truth, a courtroom would seem like a rather inconvenient place to avoid questions.
Mission accomplished, we guess.
