Shirley Sherrod, the former USDA official sacked after a deceptively edited video of her appeared online, has filed a lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart, the man who posted the footage on his web site BigGovernment.com. In a complaint filed on Feb. 11, Sherrod claims Breitbart harmed her reputation and caused her emotional distress and economic damages. Brietbart was served with the suit while attending the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. (After Sherrod was fired from her USDA post, the unedited video of her speaking at an NAACP audience emerged and it became clear she had not – as Breitbart claimed – discriminated against farmers on the basis of race while in a position at the USDA. The White House apologized to for her firing and offered her a chance to return to the agency. She declined.)
Breitbart, apparently hoping to deflect attention from the video debacle, responded with a statement focusing on a lawsuit concerning the USDA and black farmers. Sherrod was a claimant in that suit.
Here is the text of Sherrod’s lawsuit, via TPM.