REPORT: Chris Cuomo Is Burning Down CNN and Taking Don Lemon Down With It

Here’s the exact headline from USA Today, which I couldn’t believe I was reading:

Looks like things are going from bad-to-worse over at CNN.

Will the whole network go down?

We can only hope.

Here’s the latest:

WOW.

In Chris Cuomo's $125M arbitration filing, he accuses CNN of "selectively enforcing" its rules, highlighting Don Lemon's ties to Jussie Smollett, the Jake Tapper-Sean Parnell saga, and Jeffrey Toobin's masturbation scandal as "exceptions" CNN made. https://t.co/dWe3k0xoo3

— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) March 17, 2022

Blood Brothers No More: Chris Cuomo Turns On Don Lemon In CNN Complaint https://t.co/NlU2ruTz2L pic.twitter.com/DFqmRWk04u

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) March 18, 2022

Here’s more from an OpEd from the USA Today via YahooNews:

Chris Cuomo is burning down the house. Perhaps we should stand back simply to admire the flames.

On Wednesday, Cuomo asked for an arbitrator to award him $125 million because CNN fired him for what even a first-year journalism student would have understood to be egregious ethical violations.

Cuomo’s Trumpian-style lack of ethics is old news. But his rationale for demanding enough money to make a tech exec envious is truly novel: I wasn’t the only dishonest journalist on CNN’s payroll.

Cuomo drags Lemon into the mud

Exhibit No. 1 for the plaintiff is Don Lemon, the CNN host whom Cuomo used to refer to as his “brother.” (Which is rich given how quick Cuomo was to nuke journalistic ethics to bail out his brother Andrew, the former New York governor.)

In November, actor Jussie Smollett testified under oath that Lemon had tipped him off that police in Chicago didn’t buy his claim that a pair of MAGA-hat wearing thugs had emerged from a snowstorm to beat him up and wrap a rope around his neck.

Actor Jussie Smollett speaks to Judge James Linn after his sentence is read at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Thursday, March 10, 2022, in Chicago. Smollett maintained his innocence during his sentencing hearing Thursday after a judge sentenced the actor to 150 days in jail for lying to police about a racist and homophobic attack that he orchestrated himself.

Now, in Lemon’s defense, hardly anyone outside the corridors of CNN believed Smollett’s saga when the fable was first told. It shouldn’t have been shocking to learn that Chicago cops, who hear more credible yarns from truant eighth-graders, had their doubts.

But I digress. Don Lemon’s decision as a self-confessed journalist to alert Smollett that the cops were on to him was an ethical breach almost as bad as helping a politician – who just happens to be your brother – cobble together a defense against sexual harassment allegations.

More from Tim Swarens: She’s a hero who challenged Putin on live TV. Now she’s in a Russian jail cell.

“Intervening in the ongoing investigation by texting Smollett was an inexcusable breach of ethics,” Cuomo’s lawyers wrote in the arbitration filing. “Yet CNN did nothing; Lemon was not disciplined in any way.”

Inexcusable breach of ethics. Employer looks the other way. Cuomo knows all about such things.

Former CNN television host and personality Chris Cuomo has filed a demand for arbitration in his $125 wrongful termination claim against the liberal news outlet, accusing several former colleagues and executives of engaging in a "campaign to smear" him.https://t.co/2AJuRVFoNB

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) March 19, 2022

And from Newsmax:

Former CNN television host and personality Chris Cuomo has filed a demand for arbitration in his $125 wrongful termination claim against the liberal news outlet, accusing several former colleagues and executives of engaging in a “campaign to smear” him.

The Wednesday court filing charged CNN anchors, reporters and senior management with hypocrisy, ethical violations, and lying.

1. Zucker and Gollust Obtained Favors from Andrew Cuomo

He said former CNN President Jeff Zucker and then-marketing executive Allison Gollust broached ethics by using their relationship with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to obtain COVID tests at a time when they were not readily available.

2. Zucker and Gollust Advised Andrew Cuomo

Zucker and Gollust “acted as advisors to Cuomo…by providing him with talking points and strategies for responding to statements made by then-President Donald Trump.”

3. Warner Exec Kilar Accused Chris Cuomo of Journalism Malpractice

Jason Kilar, the chief executive of CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia, defamed Cuomo by suggesting he failed to uphold “highest standards of journalistic integrity at CNN.”

4. Tapper Said Chris Cuomo Threatened Zucker

CNN anchor Jake Tapper defamed Cuomo by accused him of putting CNN “in a bad spot” and saying he threatened Zucker by suggesting he’d leak damaging information about the CNN head unless he was given severance.

5. Tapper Unethically Urged Republican to Not Run Against Dem

Cuomo said Tapper urged congressional candidate Sean Parnell to not to run against Rep. Conor Lamb, but to run in a “safer, more heavily Republican district.”

6. Lemon Accused Chris Cuomo of Unethical Behavior

CNN host Don Lemon defamed him by claiming that Cuomo broke “journalistic standards and then [was] paid handsomely for it.”

7. Accused Lemon of ‘Flagrant’ Ethical Violations

He accused Lemon of “a flagrant breach of journalistic ethics” by alerting actor Jussie Smollett via text message that Chicago police did not believe Smollett’s allegations of suffering a racist, homophobic attack.

More evidence of power and corruption at the highest level of American politics. The Cuomo legacy continues. https://t.co/pMcvfUTRJG

— Ron T. Kim (@rontkim) March 11, 2022

Here’s more alleged corruption….

From the NY Post:

At the height of the pandemic, the CEO of New York’s blood bank personally offered a coronavirus-stricken Chris Cuomo special access to an experimental therapy — virtually unobtainable by anyone unrelated to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, emails reveal.

The half-billion-dollar New York Blood Center’s boss, Chris Hillyer, offered “convalescent plasma” to the then-governor’s CNN host brother Chris Cuomo, on April 17, 2020.

“Should the Cuomo family elect to take Dr. Hillyer up on his offer, his cell number is [redacted],” Mary Ann Tighe — a real-estate mogul who acted as a go-between — wrote, according to emails obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information Law request.

During the pandemic’s early days, when no therapeutics or mRNA vaccines were available, scarce convalescent plasma — drawn from people recovered from COVID-19 and laden with potentially life-saving antibodies — was in high demand.

The then-CNN host asked his brother’s right-hand aide, Melissa DeRosa, who passed on Tighe’s note: “What is that?”

“Someone’s blood who already had COVID — experimental treatment…” she responded.

“Sounds spooky,” Chris Cuomo, 51, wrote.

“Yes but, hey, far be it for me to hold back an offer of someone’s blood…” she deadpanned.

Chris Cuomo, 51 — who wasn’t above taking priority COVID-test house calls from a top state doctor in March 2020, when regular New Yorkers couldn’t get tested for love or money — rejected the blood delivery.

“I don’t want to try something that extreme when I Am not dying,” he wrote. “But thanks.”

The New York Blood Center takes in hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Hillyer, who made $1.8 million in 2019, didn’t return a request for comment. The center did not provide more recent tax filings to The Post.