A former Navy SEAL is suing a podcast over claims he lied about killing Osama bin Laden. Two podcast hosts claimed he lied about the assassination.
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Now, he’s suing them for $25 million in defamation.
Former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill claims that Antihero Broadcast podcasters Tyler Hoover and Brent Tucker damaged his reputation. The podcast hosts, starting in 2023, claimed that O’Neill didn’t actually kill bin Laden, according to The New York Post.
Both Hoover and Tucker have made remarks about the former Navy SEAL on the podcast.
“Besides the Rob O’Neill who didn’t kill bin Laden,” Tucker said in 2023. “No, he didn’t kill bin Laden! It is the worst-kept secret in all of special ops. I am not going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I was on the mission.’ I’d be as big a liar as Rob O’Neill.”
According to Tucker, he is friends with others from the bin Laden mission, and they won’t confirm O’Neill’s account. However, they also didn’t contradict it.
Navy SEAL Sues Podcast
O’Neill was part of SEAL Team Six, which targeted bin Laden in 2011. According got the lawsuit, O’Neill personally assassinated the terrorist. The lawsuit claims retired Admr. William H. McRaven confirms O’Neill’s account.
“The story that I’ve been truthful with the entire time is that I had one [other] guy [on the mission] in front of me,” O’Neill told the New York Post.
He continued, “He went one direction at the top of the stairs to confront what he thought was a suicide bomber. I turned the other way, and Osama bin Laden was standing there, and so I shot him three times. I killed Osama bin Laden. What [Tucker and Hoover] are saying is not true at all.”
However, the podcast hosts claimed the fact that O’Neill hadn’t sued them meant he was lying. Well, O’Neill is now calling that bluff with the new lawsuit. He explained, “What it takes to stop it, than this is what I’m doing.”
So the lawsuit is in order.
“The defendants’ unfounded and defamatory claims that O’Neill is a liar and a fraud have damaged his reputation and career,” the filing charged.