Poetic Justice: MSNBC Stars Forced to Pay $30M to Defamed ICE Doctor | Headline USA

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) NBCUniversal, MSNBC’s parent company, will pay $30 million to a doctor from a federal immigration center who was falsely accused by MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace and Chris Hayes of performing unnecessary hysterectomies on detainees. 

Georgia gynecologist Dr. Mahendra Amin sued the media company after these false and defamatory accusations. However, NBCUniversal settled the case for $30 million on Friday, seemingly to avoid a humiliating trial. 

According to Fox News, the parties agreed to and signed a term sheet to settle the lawsuit, as evidenced in a “joint notice of settlement.” The financial settlement language is still under development. 

The multi-million payout came after MSNBC aired several segments in 2020 featuring claims by a nurse-turned-whistleblower, who said that Dr. Amin performed unnecessary hysterectomies, procedures that remove women’s uteruses.

These allegations first surfaced in an NBC News article, prompting MSNBC to aggressively promote the story and smear the doctor as the “uterus collector” on Sept. 15, 2020. Their reporting never turned out to be factual. 

Dr. Amin affirmed that MSNBC shows such as Deadline: White House, All in with Chris Hayes and The Rachel Maddow Show made “false and defamatory” statements approximately 23 times. 

According to the lawsuit, NBCUniversal falsely portrayed the doctor as “an abusive, unethical, and dishonest physician who treated and operated on immigrant women in an abusive fashion, without consent, and motivated by profit instead of quality healthcare.” 

Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District of Georgia refused to dismiss the lawsuit, affirming that a jury could reasonably have found actual malice in NBCUniversal’s reporting. The trial was scheduled for April 22. 

“NBC investigated the whistleblower letter’s accusations; that investigation did not corroborate the accusations and even undermined some; NBC republished the letter’s accusations anyway,” Wood wrote in 2024, according to Fox News. These comments dealt a major blow to NBC News and MSNBC’s claims of journalistic integrity. 

Watch two of the segments below:

NBCUniversal’s settlement is the latest example of legacy media paying the consequences of its actions.

In December 2024, ABC News and darling host George Stephanopoulos paid President Donald Trump a whopping $15 million after they falsely accused him of committing rape. 

In January, CNN was found liable for the defamation of Navy veteran Zachary Young, who the network falsely accused of exploiting rescue missions in Afghanistan. A jury awarded Young $5 million in compensatory damages. CNN quickly settled for an undisclosed amount before the court determined punitive damages. 

Social media companies have also had to compensate Trump for banning him after the 2020 presidential election, with Meta paying $25 million and X paying $15 million.