The CNN Blackmail Scandal is an ongoing controversy over an article published by CNN threatening to reveal the identity of HanAssholeSolo over content he created that depicted a CNN logo being pummeled by Donald Trump. Although the actions by CNN do not fit the definition of blackmail, their aggressive behavior towards a private citizen has been denounced by many across social media, catipulting the hashtag #CNNBlackmail to be one of the top trending topics on Twitter. ^[17]

During after the election, Trump and the Legacy media were in a feud with each other over their respective integrity. This culminated with BuzzFeed's publishing over a dossier that became known as Pissgate. In the preceding months before, both CNN and Mother Jones alluded to the documents in their articles. The claims in the dossier ended up being discredited and possibly fabricated by anons on 4chan. In a press conference a day after when CNN's Jim Acosta pressed him to answer a question, Trump responded by saying "You are fake news." Subsequently, after the exchange, the CNN fake news meme began to pick up steam and became popular among conservatives and Trump supporters. ^{[28] [1]}

In late June and early July, James O'Keefe of Project Veritas published videos of Jimmy Carr (CNN Producer), Van Jones, and John Bonifield that question the integrity and impartiality of CNN. In the videos, the subjects in question admit that the pushing of Trump-Russia collusion was a ploy to increase ratings and that as Van Jones calls it a "nothing burger". In addition, Jimmy Carr, a New York-based CNN producer, admitted that 90% of CNN employees share the sentiment that Trump was a "clown and crazy." ^{[26] [25]}

After the initial exposure, Trump went off on CNN on Twitter, culminating in a video tweet of Trump attacking a man whose head was replaced as the CNN logo at a WWE event. He captioned the tweet #FraudNewsCNN #FNN. The tweet was sent out on July 2nd and as of July 5th garnered over 558K likes and 333K retweets. ^[19]

The video appears to originate from the Reddit user HanAssholeSolo who posted the original GIF titled Trump takes down fake news (Colorized, 2017) and received over 8,000 upvotes on The Donald subreddit. The White House neither confirmed nor denied using HanAssholeSolo's content.

Writer and Georgia Southern University professor Jared Yates Sexton accused HanAssholeSolo of Anti-Semitism over his previous Reddit posts of CNN. ^[22]In response, HansAssholeSolo published an apology saying that he apologizes for any posts that were interpreted as racist, bigoted, or anti-semitic and that he was just trolling to get a reaction out of people and that he does not advocate violence against the press. ^[21]

On July 4th, Andrew Kaczynski of CNN's investigative KFile Unit tweeted that CNN discovered HanAssholeSolo's identity through biographical bits he left on Reddit. In an article published by CNN titled How CNN found the Reddit user behind the Trump wrestling GIF. They wrote how they discovered his identity and said: ^[18]

CNN has come under fire of accusations of blackmail and the hashtag #CNN became the number 1 trending topic on Twitter. ^{[24] [23] [5]}

Julian Assange on Twitter accused CNN of violating § 135.60 of the New York Criminal Code "coercion" as well as committing a Federal felony in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 241 in relation to the 1st Amendment. ^{[4] [27]}

Anons on 8chan have viewed CNN's article threatening to expose HanAssholeSolo's identity as a declaration of war against them.

As a response, anons have doxxed reporters at CNN employees including Wolf Blitzer and Don Lemon. ^[2]In addition, anons are organizing themselves to pressure CNN's advertisers to pull from the network as well as call cable providers and demand they remove CNN from their packages. ^{[13] [11]}

Rumors have been spreading around about the age of HanAssholeSolo. He is most likely a middle-aged male, as pointed out when he said he was a teenager when the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990. ^[12]

On July 5th, Ryan Broderick of BuzzFeed published as article pointing out the differences between HanAssholeSolo's Reddit Post and Donald Trump's tweet. ^[6]A Mexican anon claims to have made the GIF originally and posted it to 4chan on January 12, 2017 and says that he is not afraid to go public with his identity. ^{[14] [16]}