Democratic Attorney: Rachel Maddow’s Behavior was ‘Preposterous’ and ‘Reckless’

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Back in February, MSNBC’s parent company settled a lawsuit brought by a gynecologist who accused the network of defaming him after three of its anchors referred to him as the “uterus collector” on air. The suggestion being made was that he was some kind of lunatic performing surgery on migrant women without their consent and without any medical need to do so.

MSNBC parent company, NBCUniversal, has settled its “uterus collector” lawsuit that saw Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, and Chris Hayes’ programs make “verifiably false” statements that a Georgia gynecologist Dr. Mahendra Amin performed unnecessary hysterectomies at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center.  

The parties have agreed to, and signed, a term sheet to settle the lawsuit, according to a joint notice of settlement obtained by Fox News Digital. The parties are working to finalize the language of the settlement agreement and are expected to effectuate the settlement within the next several weeks…

Maddow, Hayes and Wallace were among potential witnesses if it reached trial, along with NBC News reporters Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley, MSNBC producer Denis Horgan, senior director of stands and practices Mary Lockhart, deputy head of standards Chris Scholl and others.

It was Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley who brought this story to MSNBC based on the claims of a “whistleblower” who turned out to be misinformed and unreliable. Their first version of the story was found to be too thin to publish but they added some details and were able to get it through the Standards and Practices office at NBC. Then Rachel Maddow jumped on it as another way to attack the Trump administration. The problem was that none of it was true. Judge Lisa Godbey Wood looked at the claims and concluded they could be proved verifiably false.

The undisputed evidence has established that: (1) there were no mass hysterectomies or high numbers of hysterectomies at the facility; (2) Dr. Amin performed only two hysterectomies on female detainees from the ICDC; and (3) Dr. Amin is not a “uterus collector.”…

The issue here is not that NBC reported that Plaintiff treated ICE detainees when he actually treated state prisoners, or that he performed the procedures at his office when he actually performed them at a hospital. NBC did not get some innocuous details wrong. The alleged falsehoods are a night-and-day difference from the alleged truth. The damage done to Plaintiff’s reputation by the accusations that he physically hurt women, that he removed women’s reproductive organs without their consent, and that he performed unnecessary hysterectomies and medical procedures is materially different from any damage the pleaded truth would have caused—Plaintiff’s assertion that he did not injure any patients, always acted with consent, and performed only medically necessary procedures.

The case was finalized Wednesday, with the terms still not disclosed.

Both parties struck the settlement in February, but the lawsuit was officially dismissed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. The terms of the settlement were not publicly disclosed.

“We are pleased that Dr. Amin is able to move on from his years-long litigation against NBCUniversal,” Amin’s attorneys, Stacey Evans and Scott Grubman, told Fox News Digital. “It is unfortunate that he had to sue to get confirmation of what was known all along—that he did not perform mass hysterectomies on women detained at Irwin County Detention Center. We are glad that the judge found those statements false as a matter of law because, in fact, Dr. Amin performed only two hysterectomies, both of which were medically necessary and consented to by the patients.

Attorney Stacey Evans, who is a Democrat and someone who has watched Maddow’s show many times, had a lot more to say about her disappointment in the network and its anchors. 

“It was Rachel Maddow who tried to tie Dr. Amin as the next chapter in the continuing saga, essentially, of mistreatment of immigrants by the Donald Trump administration. And she opened that block by talking about child separation policies and this former Trump administrator who had been tracking women’s menstrual cycles — just some really sick stuff — and then to say that Dr. Amin was the next chapter in this saga, it was preposterous the way she did it,” Evans told Fox News Digital…

“What they did was so egregious, in my opinion, in continuing to go with these statements that he was a uterus collector, that he had performed mass hysterectomies when they had in their hands — all the data they could muster was two hysterectomies, and they knew that,” Evans said. 

“They know that ICE had also found those two in their records and said that they had found them to be medically necessary through their internal procedures,” she continued. “Classic example of following sensationalism as opposed to facts.”

Evidence introduced in the case showed that when the topic was first introduced in a planning meeting, Maddow sounded somewhat skeptical. “If it’s true, we should go with it, but I don’t want to assume it’s true,” she reportedly said. But according to those same records, Maddow threw caution to the wind just 8 minutes later and agreed the story would lead off her show that night.

“It’s very, very sad,” Evans said. “Seeing her go from skepticism about whether the story was true to making it her A-block and tying someone who was a private doctor, tying him to Trump administration policies, and using that as her A-block in eight minutes, at least that’s what it appeared to be on paper, was very, very, very disappointing.”

Personally, I don’t find it surprising at all. Maddow spent as much time as anyone on TV promoting the Steele Dossier and conspiratorial claims about the Russia collusion scandal, all which turned out to be nothing (except maybe Russian disinformation). But I guess it’s good to see that even some fans of MSNBC are realizing what a deep disappointment Maddow is as a journalist.

It would be great if we could put an exact dollar figure on MSNBC’s collective failure in the handling this story but I guess the parties have agreed not to reveal it. I hope Dr. Amin got at least $10 million out of these creeps.