The Buffalo media’s dogpile onto SVU Detective Richard Hy had some major developments since he blew the whistle in late April. The pressure on Buffalo, New York public schools ratcheted up once the local media realized that there was truth to Hy’s allegations, with teachers and parents coming forward. But one outlet in particular, Channel 2 WGRZ (the local NBC affiliate) was allegedly defaming Hy by falsely claiming he was on the infamous Brady List, according to Hy and Unsubscribe Podcast host Nic (a.k.a. The Fat Electrician); for which Hy threatened: “I'm not gonna sue the sh** out of them.”
On the May 24 episode of the Unsubscribe Podcast (episode 214), a very popular veteran-owned podcast, former National Guard medic and historian YouTuber The Fat Electrician, whose real name was Nic, announced that he had “built an entire case to sue one of the news channels” for allegedly defaming Hy.
According to Nic, each reporter for WGRZ (say for Nate Benson) who had been covering Hy’s allegations “sh**s on Rich to the point that it's now defamatory, and I can prove it.” Warning WGRZ that he had saved all the videos and articles in question, Nic contended that, “they've all claimed that detective Richard Hy is on the Brady Lists.”
The so-called “Brady List” was a registry of police officers who were apparently so untrustworthy that any testimony they gave under oath couldn’t be believed. As Hy explained, not only has his career been free of any questions of his integrity, but being on the Brady List would make it impossible for him to do his job as a detective:
The Brady List means that you, you're on like the no-fly list when it comes to the district attorneys for when you go and take the stand to testify. It specifically states that you have credibility issues, which I know I've never lied on the stand and all of my internal affairs or complaints never has to do with my evidence collection, my time on the stand, my integrity, or lying about any sort of charges that I've put on. So I have zero credibility issues on the stand. That is my history. But them saying that I'm on the Brady list would say. That I do have credibility issues and that I cannot testify because of those issues.
“I would say it's significant and would look very poorly in my career because a detective not being able to testify is significant,” he noted.
Nic brought the receipts in the form of a WGRZ video report where an unnamed reporter specifically claims that Hy was on the Brady List that it meant he had “credibility issues”:
Officer Hy alleges the district failed to report an attempted abduction, sexual assault, child abuse, and destroyed evidence, which he discovered while working a case, allegations that have outweighed Hy’s status on the Brady List, which is a list of law enforcement officers whom the Erie County District Attorney's office have found to have credibility issues.
“So, claiming that somebody is so un-credible that they can't even testify in court under oath is a pretty big allegation,” Nic said as he pointed out that WGRZ was the only Buffalo outlet doing it.
Nic then dropped a major bomb, proclaiming that he could get over a major hurdle for defamation case and prove that WGRZ was being malicious in their reporting. As he explained, he trained an A.I. to trawl through the outlet’s reporting and it discovered that Hy was the 3rd-most reported on cop in their history (Click “expand”):
NIC: The problem with defamation is if I was gonna sue you for it, I would have to prove that it wasn't a genuine mistake and that you did it maliciously. Right. So, how would I be able to prove that?
HY: Well, history –
BRANDON HERRERA: Other than –
HY: - would probably be able to.
NIC: Like an ongoing history? Cool. What if, what if, I trained an advanced AI to go through their entire website and catalog the top 10 officers in the history of the news source that they've written articles about, and Rich is the 3rd-most reported on cop in Buffalo history out of 800 police officers, and not a single article is near even remotely charitable to Rich.
HY: Some of them don't even have to do with me, but they bring me into the article to then defame me.
NIC: Any time they get a chance to throw him under the bus, they do it. Okay. So I can prove that he's the 3rd-most reported on cop in Buffalo's history out of 800 [censored] cops, which to me says that you've got a wild hair up your ass and you're gunning for him. Okay.
He also argued that he could prove WGRZ damaged Hy’s reputation, and other key factor in a successful defamation case:
Oh yeah, that’s was the other part is I would have to prove financial harm. Which would be tricky to do unless I - unless I got like 20 to 30 people to comb through every Reddit and Facebook post that's been out since this case broke and took screenshots of hundreds of people parroting the same talking point that Rich is on the Brady List. Which came directly from them, from a “credible” news source. Now I can prove that it did harm his reputation.
Demanding a dedicated article apologizing to his friend, Nic threatened to release all the evidence and let Hy pursue them legally: "I mean, I would make a whole [censored] article titled ‘WGRZ Apologizes to SVU Detective Richard Hy for [Censored] Lying,’ or I'm gonna turn over all this evidence and then go to the kitchen and grab some popcorn while I watch him sue the dog sh** out of you." Hy then held up a mug with "Bad B****" written on it.
Further, Nic said he didn’t know who was behind the targeting of Hy over at WGRZ, but “they're gonna cost that place a lot of [censored] money unless they start eating some crow.”
Hy quipped that any image they use of him for the apology article “better be flattering. If I have two chins, I'm not gonna sue the sh** out of them.”
WGRZ had not issued an apology to Hy as of the publishing of this piece.