Kim Kardashian Is Suing These Gossip Blogs
Kim Kardashian has been laying low since she was robbed of millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry at gunpoint. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been taking action - especially against people who claim she completely made up her traumatic experience.
TMZ reports that Kim is suing MediaTakeOut.com and its owner, Fred Mwangaguhunga, for writing three posts claiming that she made up the robbery, let the robbers into her Paris apartment, and could be committing a federal crime for her supposed deception. Kim demanded they retract the posts and apologize, but nobody got back to her legal team, so now she’s suing.
"After having been the victim of a horrific and traumatic armed robbery in France, Kim Kardashian returned to the United States only to again be victimized, but this time by an online gossip tabloid that published a series of articles in early October 2016 referring to her [as] a liar and thief," lawyer Andrew Brettler wrote in the court complaint, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Kim’s team is arguing that the site didn’t use any legit sources and purposely published its posts to harm her.
MediaTakeOut has not released any comment about the lawsuit, and it’s unclear how much money Kim is seeking in damages. According to Entertainment Tonight, the posts mentioned in the lawsuit now simply read “Removed Story.” So watch out, truthers: Kim is not going to mess around here.
Update 10/12, 10 p.m.: Shortly after suing MediaTakeOut.com for their article that claimed she’d faked being robbed at gunpoint, Kim Kardashian is now taking legal action against another source for implying that the whole thing was fake.
EXCLUSIVE!
Explosive Police Video INSIDE Kim's Paris Hotel After $10M Heist Punches MAJOR Holes In Official Story! https://t.co/HFd3UZnXZU- Radar Online (@radar_online) October 11, 2016
On Tuesday, RadarOnline.com published a video from the inside of Kim’s Paris apartment directly following the attack, showing the reality star sitting off to the side and FaceTiming with someone while police investigate around her. In the accompanying article, Radar dissects why they believe the video is odd, focusing on the fact that she was using a phone despite hers being stolen, that her wrists did not appear to be bruised despite being bound by zip ties, and that there were no signs of forced entry.
However, none of these "findings" really prove much of anything. As ONTD points out, Kim could very likely have been using someone else’s phone; it’s possible the marks just weren’t visible on film or that Kim simply didn’t bruise; and the concierge let the robbers into the room, so there wouldn’t be any signs of forced entry.
Radar later removed the video but kept the article itself, adding the following note at the bottom:
The video accompanying this article has been removed because of a legal threat from Kim Kardashian, and the article revised accordingly. We do not believe, however, that either the video or the article accuse Ms. Kardashian of “faking” the Paris robbery, as her attorneys have claimed, and which we did not intend. Rather, they raise legitimate questions about the events at issue, questions which many media outlets and many other people have also raised. We apologize to Ms. Kardashian for any implication otherwise.
Update 10/16, 8:00 p.m.: In an interview with CNN on Sunday, MediaTakeOut founder Fred Mwangaguhunga acknowledged that the stories they’d written about the Kim Kardashian robbery were both untrue and harmful. They have all since been taken down.
"Our number one goal is to produce the most accurate information as quickly as possible and we did that," Mwangaguhunga said. "But now, looking back at it, you have a chance often times to look back and reflect on what it is that happened. It’s now clear that she was robbed. It’s clear that the reporting that we did hurt her, and we certainly don’t want that to be what we do."
"It’s a bigger issue than just someone telling you to take it down," he continued. "Sometimes you take it down because there’s something on there that’s not right and your readers are being misled by the information on it."
Update 10/25, 9:55 a.m.: The Daily Mail reports that Kim has dropped the lawsuit against MediaTakeOut.com after the site posted an apology. According to court documents, the suit was “voluntarily dismissed, without prejudice, against defendants Mediatakeout.com LLC and Fred Mwangaguhunga." Part of MediaTakeOut.com’s apology from Oct. 14 reads, “No one deserves to go through such a traumatic experience. Kim is not just a celebrity, she is a person, a wife and a mother - who in no way deserved what happened to her.”
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