NBCUniversal quietly settled a $30 million defamation lawsuit filed by a Georgia doctor after MSNBC’s biggest stars—including Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, and Chris Hayes—falsely accused him of performing “mass hysterectomies” on women detained at an immigration facility during the first Trump administration and dubbed him the “uterus collector.”
The network settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed sum Thursday, avoiding a jury trial that was scheduled to begin on April 22 in Georgia’s Southern District. The suit arose from explosive MSNBC reports in 2020 alleging that Mahendra Amin, whom network anchors dubbed the “uterus collector,” conducted unnecessary and unauthorized gynecological procedures, including hysterectomies, on immigrant women at an ICE facility.
Maddow, Wallace, and Hayes aggressively pushed those claims, which stemmed from a whistleblower complaint and became a centerpiece of MSNBC’s coverage of alleged abuses under President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Amin sued MSNBC for defamation in September 2021, denying that he had performed any unnecessary medical procedures.
The case’s conclusion marks the latest high-profile settlement involving a left-wing media network. Just last month, CNN settled its own bombshell defamation suit. A Florida jury determined that the network defamed Navy veteran Zachary Young by airing coverage that portrayed him as an “illegal profiteer” who operated in a “black market” while he worked to evacuate Afghans during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. CNN was ordered to pay Young $5 million for economic and emotional damages. The settlement included additional punitive damages, but the amount remains confidential. CBS News, meanwhile, is reportedly eyeing a settlement with Trump over his lawsuit targeting the network’s sloppy edit of Kamala Harris’s pre-election 60 Minutes sit-down.
A federal judge ruled last year that the MSNBC hosts made 39 “verifiably false” statements about Amin. The judge found that a jury could reasonably conclude the network acted with “actual malice.” Internal NBC documents revealed lingering doubts among reporters about the whistleblower’s claims, but aired the story anyway. Emails and texts uncovered during discovery showed that journalists, including Maddow and Hayes, had early reservations about the allegations.
Maddow—who was deposed for the lawsuit—and Hayes were personally involved in the off-camera vetting and editorial conversations around the segment to an extent that can be unusual for on-camera hosts, according to documents revealed during discovery. Last year, Maddow took a $5 million pay cut, reducing her annual salary from $30 million to $25 million over the next three years. At the time, she was hosting her show only one night per week, but she resumed a full five-night-per-week schedule during the first 100 days of Trump’s administration.
The saga began with a Sept. 15, 2020, NBC News article about the “uterus collector” by Julia Ainsley, a homeland security reporter, Jacob Soboroff, who covers immigration for NBC News and MSNBC, and Danielle Silva, an NBC News national reporter who covers immigration and education. The journalists obtained a whistleblower complaint from Dawn Wooten, a former nurse at the ICE facility, and interviewed her. The resulting story reported that “women are routinely being sent to a gynecologist who has left them bruised and performed unnecessary procedures, including hysterectomies.”
Soboroff wrote in one text message that an immigration attorney he spoke with offered “mixed feelings” about Wooten. In another text, Ainsley expressed concern at the small number of procedures Amin was alleged to perform asking Soboroff, “Just two hysterectomies?”—far fewer than the “mass hysterectomies” the reporting suggested.
Still, MSNBC used the story to fuel its anti-Trump rhetoric, generating significant viewership and profits for NBCUniversal and its parent company, Comcast. The liberal network spent much of Trump’s first term pushing the debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative, including in dozens of segments on Maddow’s program.
Soboroff, meanwhile, didn’t face any changes to his role over his involvement, with NBC putting him on air more than 30 times to cover the California wildfires that burned through Los Angeles, including for an extensive interview with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.). Soboroff’s father, developer Steve Soboroff, serves as Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass’s (D.) wildfire recovery czar.
MSNBC previously settled a defamation lawsuit with Nicholas Sandmann after the network aired more than a dozen segments about the Kentucky high school student’s confrontation with a Native American activist at the National Mall in 2019. MSNBC employees accused Sandmann of a “hate crime,” among other allegations.
NBCUniversal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post NBC Settles Defamation Lawsuit With Georgia Doctor Whom Rachel Maddow Dubbed the ‘Uterus Collector,’ Avoiding High Stakes Trial appeared first on .
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