The conservative commentator Glenn Beck must reveal the names of confidential sources he used in reports alleging that a Saudi Arabian student injured in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was “the money man” who funded the attack, a US federal judge has ruled.
In her decision on Tuesday, Chief Judge Patti Saris of the US district court in Boston also rejected Beck’s latest effort to dismiss Abdulrahman Alharbi’s defamation case against him and TheBlaze radio network, which broadcasts Beck’s radio show.
Beck repeatedly linked Alharbi to the 15 April 2013 bombing on his radio show and continued doing so after the homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano cleared the student in congressional testimony.
Saris said Alharbi, 23, of Revere, Massachusetts, may learn the names of two Department of Homeland Security officials who allegedly provided information to officials at TheBlaze, to help rebut Beck’s claims and show his reporting was inadequate.
She said Alharbi may also be entitled to the name of a federal anti-terrorism agent who also spoke with TheBlaze, if that agent said Alharbi funded the bombing.
“The only way to verify or confirm what the confidential sources told the defendants would be to speak with the sources themselves,” Saris wrote in a 61-page decision. Beck never spoke with the sources, she added.
Most US states have shield laws protecting journalists from revealing confidential sources but Massachusetts does not.
In letting the defamation case continue Saris said Alharbi could try to show that the defendants were negligent and may seek damages for emotional distress and harm to his reputation.
She said Alharbi could not seek punitive damages because Massachusetts law did not permit this.
Alharbi had been a spectator near the marathon’s finish line when two homemade pressure-cooker bombs ripped through the crowd, killing three people and injuring more than 260.
The ethnic Chechen brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were implicated in the bombing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in June 2015. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot and killed by police a few days after the bombing.