Breitbart News preps ‘multimillion-dollar’ lawsuit against ‘major media company’

Breitbart News announced Tuesday that it was preparing a “multimillion-dollar” lawsuit to counter claims that it is a white nationalist website.

Charges of racism against Breitbart News have been leveled for months by critics of Stephen Bannon, its executive chairman and president-elect Donald Trump’s campaign chief. Mr. Bannon, who will now help guide Mr. Trump’s administration as its chief strategist, maintains that his focus is on American populism and a rejection of globalism.

“Breitbart News Network, a pro-America, conservative website, is preparing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a major media company for its baseless and defamatory claim that Breitbart News is a ’white nationalist website,’” the company said Tuesday in an exclusive statement to The Hill.

“Breitbart News cannot allow such vicious racial lies to go unchallenged, especially by cynical, politically-motivated competitors seeking to diminish its 42 million monthly readers and its number one in the world political Facebook page. Breitbart News rejects racism in all its varied and ugly forms. Always has, always will.”

Mr. Bannon, 62, agreed to an interview Monday with The New York Times and flatly denied supporting “ethno-nationalist” strains of the anti-globalist movement. He said the vast majority of Mr. Trump’s supporters are “patriots.”

“They love their country,” he told the newspaper. “They just want their country taken care of. It’s not that some people on the margins, as in any movement, aren’t bad guys — racists, anti-Semites. But that’s irrelevant.”

A specific timeline and the media company Breitbart aims to sue was not disclosed at this time, The Hill reported.