Did Charlie Kirk's wife Erika Kirk file a $40 million lawsuit against ABC, as is claimed in a social media post? No, that's not true: The story originated on a satirical Facebook page that clearly labels its content as fake. The owner of the page is known for tricking conservatives into liking and sharing made-up content. The social media post repeating the fake news site's item did not cite a source for the story of Erika Kirk filing a lawsuit against ABC.
The claim appeared in a September 17, 2025 post on X.com account @OHOUR1_ (archived here). It opened:
Erika Kirk has filed a 40 Million dollar lawsuit against ABC
This is what the post looked like on X.com at the time of writing:
(Image source: X.com account @)HOUR1_ screenshot taken by Lead Stories.)
The post does not cite a news source or court document for the claim of Erika Kirk filing the lawsuit, but a post on the Facebook account @AmericasLastLineofDefense posted the exact story on September 16, 2025, the day before the X post was made. The post on Facebook was captioned, "The days of smearing good people for profit have come to an end. It's time to start holding them accountable under the law."
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Facebook account @AmericasLastLineofDefense screenshot taken by Lead Stories.)
As seen in the screenshot above, the image showed a logo of "America's Last Line of Defense," and the homepage of the Facebook account (archived here) clearly states, "The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real."
The claim that Erika Kirk filed the lawsuit against ABC appeared on the X.com account hours after the news that ABC had suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live for criticizing MAGA leaders' actions and statements after Charlie Kirk's death. The news of Kimmel's show being suspended on September 17, 2025, was covered on major news outlets including The New York Times (archived here) and Fox News (archived here).
A search on the New York State Unified Court System, where ABC is headquartered, for any lawsuits filed by Erika Kirk did not find any matching results as of September 18, 2025, as this screenshot shows:
(Image source: New York State Unified Court System website screenshot taken by Lead Stories.)
Had Charlie Kirk's wife filed a $40 million lawsuit against ABC, it would have been major news. A Google search found no actual news reports of her doing so. Similarly, the Yahoo! News index of partner news sites and news services (archived here) showed similar fake social media posts and no legitimate news reports that she filed a lawsuit against ABC.
The Facebook page that posted the story about Erika Kirk filing a lawsuit against ABC says it is run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who, for years, has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
The account is part of a network of satire websites and those pages display satire disclaimers and predominantly publish made-up stories with headlines specifically created to trigger Republicans, conservatives and evangelical Christians into angrily sharing or commenting on the story on Facebook without actually reading the full article, exposing them to mockery and ridicule by fans of the sites and pages.
Blair's stories have been widely copied by spammy, foreign website networks seeking to profit by spamming American conservatives with clickbait headlines.
