5 years later, yet another woke-era hate crime hoax has fallen apart

Last month, a Texas district court judge ordered Smith and Cole to pay $3.2 million in damages to Vann after a civil trial last year found that they had fabricated the entire story and “intentionally inflicted severe emotional distress” on the innocent teen.

Also, of the $120,000 donated to Smith, only $1,000 went to her son. Much of the rest was spent on luxury items, including “a designer dog, dining and travel, beauty products, liquor, vapes, cell phones, car payments, and rent,” according to a Washington Free Beacon review of account statements.

Regarding the media outlets that had been so eager to promote the Humphrey hoax, none of them has published any follow-up reports mentioning either the 2025 jury decision or the damages the Texas judge ordered paid to Vann.

5 years later, yet another woke-era hate crime hoax has fallen apart

The Hill – Opinion by Becket Adams, opinion contributor -2/9/26

Hate crime hoaxes are nothing new, but during the “woke” overcorrection of the late teens and early 2020s, when everyone was morally obligated to pretend they enjoyed “Hamilton” and that Kendrick Lamar absolutely deserved a Pulitzer, they reached heretofore unimaginable heights.

Consider the 2021 case in Plano, Texas, where a white teenager, Asher Vann, was accused of “torturing” a Black classmate, SeMarion Humphrey, by shooting him with BBs, abusing him with racial slurs and even forcing him to drink urine.

It was a shocking story. It was also a total fabrication, cooked up to raise money and the national profiles of the supposed victim’s family and their attorney.

A civil jury determined last year that nothing transpired as initially described. The accused’s vindication reached its completion last month when a judge announced the amount of damages the white teen is owed. But you would hardly know any of this, because the news outlets that breathlessly reported the initial hoax — even to the point of potentially putting the accused’s life in danger — haven’t published any follow-up stories as of this writing.

That is outrageous, given the sheer scale and audacity of the original lies.

It was 2021 when Humphrey’s mother, Summer Smith, first made these allegations of utterly depraved wrongdoing. NBC, CBS, CNN, the Dallas Morning News and Good Morning America were among the first to jump on the story. Each eagerly reported the supposed indignities suffered by a Black teen at the hands of a racist white Texan.

Smith, who would later describe Vann as “evil,” made the rounds on the networks with her attorney, Kim Cole, appearing on CNN and ABC News. The latter even promoted a GiveSendGo campaign set up by the attorney on behalf of the supposed victim’s family.

The fundraising account raised an impressive $120,000 from supporters, who responded to the call for help with SeMarion’s schooling and therapy. The NAACP organized marches. Vann was doxxed, and protesters showed up at his home. The leader of a Black Lives Matter-affiliated activist group claimed that the Black student had been “tortured for hours.”

That was then. Last month, a Texas district court judge ordered Smith and Cole to pay $3.2 million in damages to Vann after a civil trial last year found that they had fabricated the entire story and “intentionally inflicted severe emotional distress” on the innocent teen.

Also, of the $120,000 donated to Smith, only $1,000 went to her son. Much of the rest was spent on luxury items, including “a designer dog, dining and travel, beauty products, liquor, vapes, cell phones, car payments, and rent,” according to a Washington Free Beacon review of account statements.

Regarding the media outlets that had been so eager to promote the Humphrey hoax, none of them has published any follow-up reports mentioning either the 2025 jury decision or the damages the Texas judge ordered paid to Vann.

Lastly, regarding Vann himself, he has moved on with his life and is now in college, having spent the past five years receiving death threats and dodging doxxing attempts. He also told the Free Beacon that, during the height of the hoax against him, none of the newsrooms that amplified the supposed victim’s story ever contacted him for comment. Not even once. An oversight, perhaps?

The 2021 hoax story was, in its time, the most shocking racial hate-crime allegation reported since 2019. That was when two white Trump supporters supposedly jumped actor Jussie Smollett in downtown Chicago at 2 a.m. in sub-zero temperatures. They were reported to have doused him with bleach, put a noose around his neck, and yelled, “This is MAGA country.”

That, of course, never happened either. Smollett stage-managed the attack upon himself, apparently in a bizarre and ill-advised attempt to boost his personal profile.

The most frustrating thing about such hate-crime hoaxes, besides all the media attention they tend to attract, is that they persist precisely because we in the media keep falling for them, treating them with seriousness and care, even when they are clearly dubious from the beginning.

There is no shortage of recent examples.

An Arab American server in Odessa, Texas, claimed he had been stiffed on a bill, and that the customer had written, “We don’t tip terrorist [sic]” on the receipt. He lied.

A black waitress in Virginia reported that a customer left her a note saying, “Great service, don’t tip black people.” Clearly a lie.

A gay waitress in New Jersey said her customers left her a note that said, “Sorry, I cannot tip because I do not agree with your lifestyle and the way you live your life.” She lied.

A bisexual North Park University student claimed a stalker had sent her homophobic notes and emails referencing President Trump. It was a lie.

A Muslim student at the University of Louisiana claimed that two white Trump supporters had torn off her hijab and stolen her wallet the day after the 2016 election. She lied.

A lesbian couple in Colorado accused their neighbor of spray-painting “Kill the Gay” on their garage and placing a noose on their front door. They lied.

A gay pastor claimed a cake decorator at a Whole Foods in Austin wrote “Love Wins F–” on his dessert. It was a lie.

David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, Indiana, was vandalized with a swastika and the words “Heil Trump” and “F– Church.” It turned out the church’s organist, who is gay, was the one who did it.

A Black Viterbo University student claimed she was targeted with harassment, including racist graffiti and messages, and an arson fire in her dorm. It turned out she wrote the notes and set the fire herself.

During the 2023 Colorado Springs mayoral race, a trio of Black activists, who supported the Black candidate, “found” a burning cross and a campaign sign defaced with a racial slur on their front lawn. It turned out the supporters had staged the supposed hate crime themselves.

In each case, the alleged hate crime claim received extensive media coverage, all of it issuing grim warnings about America rushing headlong into a future of intense racist and phobic abuse.

Journalists are supposed to think critically. We don’t have to bite on every bogus story. Decline, as people say more and more nowadays, is a choice. Likewise, when it comes to uncritically parroting some of these hate crime stories and spreading moral panic, we all have a choice.

T. Becket Adams is a longtime journalist and media critic in Washington.