Chris Cuomo sues Don Lemon on $ 125M lawsuit against CNN

• Former CNN host Chris Cuomo is seeking a $ 125 million payout from the network.
• In a legal brief obtained by Deadline, Cuomo accused ex-colleagues of “destroying” him.
• He also claimed that his friend Don Lemon once violated CNN rules but withdrew.

Chris Cuomo slammed his former CNN “brother” Don Lemon in arbitration on Wednesday, as part of a $ 125 million lawsuit filed against the network that he fired.

In arbitration, first received by the deadline, Cuomo claimed that his career had suffered “innumerable” damage from his dismissal by CNN in December.

He accused some of his former CNN colleagues of “destroying” his reputation in the process.

Cuomo was fired last year after it emerged he had privately helped his brother, then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, navigate a scandal of sexual harassment.

He is seeking $ 15 million in salary for the remainder of his four-year contract and $ 110 million in damages.

In a nutshell, Cuomo claims that former CNN executives Jeff Zucker and Allison Gollust – who both resigned from the network earlier this year after failing to disclose their romantic relationship – did not discipline other CNN employees who appear to be breaking the rules.

“As long as CNN’s ratings were not violated, Sugar and Gollust were more than willing to ignore major transgressions by CNN personalities like Don Lemon and Jake Tapper, or even engage in blatant misconduct,” the inscription said.

Cuomo specifically named Lemon, with whom he shared a close relationship.

The brief cites a specific incident in November 2021 in which Lemon apparently warned “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett that the Chicago police did not believe his false accusations of a hate crime.

“Intervening in the ongoing investigation by sending Smollett text messages was an indispensable violation of ethics,” the registrar argued. “But CNN did nothing. Lemon was by no means disciplined.”

Areeche also quoted a 2020 Fox News article claiming that the brave “congressional candidate Sean Parnell repeatedly demanded not to run against Rep. Conor Lamb, but to run in a” safer “more difficult Republican neighborhood . “

“CNN did not conduct an investigation or impose any disciplinary action on Tapper,” the statement said.

CNN’s parent company Turner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lemon and Cuomo shared a bromance on screen, often calling each other “brother” and exchanging “I love you” during their on-air primetime handoffs. They posed together on Instagram for pictures.

Lemon did not publicly comment on Cuomo’s fire, but was critical of the possibility of a dismissal of Cuomo at a CNN meeting in February, following Zucker’s resignation.

In an audio clip of the meeting, received by insider Claire Atkinson, Lemon said, “Have you thought about how a message it sends to the journalists in this company and to the general public that one can be found to comply with these journalistic standards? break and then you get paid well for it? “