MARTINSBURG – A conservative podcaster has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit saying Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign claimed he supports a dictatorship.
Tim Pool filed his complaint September 17 in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of West Virginia against Harris For President.
Pool, who lives in West Virginia, identifies himself as a social media content creator, commentator and independent journalist. He says he has interviewed political leaders as well as current and former presidential candidates “on all sides of our partisan divides.” He also says he voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. Pool says he “holds views with defy easy categorization on the left-right political spectrum.
He has millions of followers across numerous platforms, including millions of subscribers on YouTube. He says his content has generated more than a billion views on that platform. He explores current events on a nightly show and other shows. He also operates an X (formerly Twitter) account that has more than 2.1 million followers.
“If anything, Mr. Pool’s worldview is woven together by a common thread: deep skepticism of corporate and state power,” the complaint states. “Mr. Pool’s skepticism grew as he observed the global war on terror and later when he interviewed protesters on the streets of New York City during the Occupy Wall Street movement.”
Pool says his is a “committed civil libertarian and an avowed opponent of capital punishment, even for society’s most reviled offenders.” He says he has criticized members of both major political parties for abusing individual rights.
According to the complaint, a post by the Harris campaign on X (formerly Twitter) that has been viewed more than 12 million times says Pool is promoting Project 2025, and it called it a “plan to give Trump total, unchecked legal power so they can jail and execute those who don’t support Trump if he wins.”
Pool says August 31 post by the campaign at @KamalaHQ, didn’t “hedge this statement or couch it as opinion.”
“To the contrary, to any reasonable reader, the Harris campaign was saying that Mr. Pool wants to suspend the Constitution, make President Trump dictator and use state power to imprison and kill Mr. Pool and President Trump’s political opponents,” the complaint states. “According to the Harris campaign then, Mr. Pool’s ‘plan’ is to imitate one of the hallmarks of the most abhorrent, murderous regimes of the past and present.”
Simply put, the complaint says what the campaign published was a lie.
“Mr. Pool has never advocated for the lawless, extrajudicial killing of his (or anyone else’s) political opponents, to include in the video clip the Harris campaign incorporated into its X post,” the complaint states. “Both the clip and its context demonstrate Mr. Pool’s commitment to civil liberties, which is consistent with his past criticisms of drone strikes involving American citizens in the war on terrorism. Shocked by the Harris campaign’s malicious disregard for the truth, Mr. Pool almost immediately threatened legal action, but the post and the deception it creates remains to this day.”
Pool says the reputational harm inflicted on him by the campaign will take millions of dollars to undo. He says he also is ramping up security efforts as a “shield against those who bought the Harris campaign’s lie and might seek to do him and those he cares about harm.”
He says the post gave people an excuse to distance themselves from him and made them less likely to appear on his shows, adding he will have to spend “millions of dollars to win an audience with those who now falsely believe he wants a dictatorship that will imprison and execute his political opponents.”
Pool also says a man showed up at a property owned by Pool shortly after the post was made, and one of his employees reported being assaulted by the man.
“Mr. Pool cannot stand idly by while the Harris campaign’s lie continues to fester, inflaming the public while harming his reputation and cutting him off from those he wants to reach and persuade,” the complaint states.
He accuses the campaign of defamation/libel per se under state law as well as bad faith misconduct.
Pool seeks all cognizable damages, attorney fees, court costs and other relief. He also seeks an order for the campaign to retract the original publication in the same forums and broadcast media.
He is being represented by James R. Lawrence II of Envisage Law in Raleigh, N.C., and by J.B. Akers of Akers Law Offices in Charleston. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Gina Groh.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia case number 3:24-cv-127