Alec Baldwin’s name has continued to make headlines over the last couple of months as investigations continue into the accidental death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the western film Rust. Lawsuits have been filed by more than one party and as the man who held the gun, as well as a producer on the film, Alec Baldwin will likely have his hands full legally speaking. But now Baldwin has been named in a new lawsuit worth $25 million that has nothing to do with a death on a movie set, and is instead focused on social media comments surrounding the Capitol Riots in 2021.
Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum was a U.S. Marine who died in one of the suicide bombings at the Kabul, Afghanistan airport last August. Alec Baldwin apparently sent his widow some money as a tribute to the fallen soldier, but now that widow, Jiennah McCollum, and the soldier’s two sisters, have filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit against Baldwin after he allegedly called the family insurrectionists.
The issue goes back to January 3 of this year, when one of the fallen soldier’s sisters, Roice McCollum, posted a “throwback” picture to Instagram which showed her in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot. Baldwin publicly responded to the picture on Instagram, referencing the money he had given, Insider reports that the lawsuit claims that Baldwin then privately messaged the woman where he accused her of being an “insurrectionist.”
According to the suit, Baldwin then posted to his own Instagram account bringing attention to the photo, resulting in Baldwin’s followers flooding the post with “hostile, aggressive, hateful messages.” The lawsuit states Roice McCollum attended the January 6 event in a “peaceful, law-abiding manner” and she apparently told Alec Baldwin in response to his private messages that she had already spoken with the FBI.
Needless to say, the events in Washington D.C on January 6, 2021 have resulted in a flurry of criminal charges and we certainly haven’t seen the last of that. The events are still incredibly contentious, so it’s little surprise we’re seeing the events result in civil litigation as well.
This marks, at minimum, the third lawsuit that Alec Baldwin is dealing with directly, Two separate suits have been filed in relation to the accident on the set of the movie Rust. Both the chief of lighting and the script supervisor for the movie have filed separate lawsuits against the [producers of the movie, of which Baldwin was one. The suits claims that the discharging of the gun that led to the death of Halyna Hutchins was part of a pattern of accidents on the film that were the result of an unsafe work environment.