The ex-Navy SEAL who shot and killed Osama bin Laden is now suing a pair of podcasters after they claimed he was lying about assassinating the founder of al-Qaeda.
New court papers reveal that Robert O'Neill, a decorated former member of the special operations military force, has claimed that Tyler Hoover and Brent Tucker, hosts of the Antihero Broadcast podcast, have falsely claimed that he has been lying about the assassination.
O'Neill has long claimed to be the man responsible for the death of bin Laden over the years, saying that Hoover and Tucker started their on-air crusade against him in 2023 before continuing to claim he was lying about his act from May 2011.
The American war hero filed the lawsuit at the Westchester County Supreme Court on Monday, 10 November, with court documents obtained by the New York Post stating he is looking for $25,000,000 (£19,000,000) in damages.
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The 49-year-old even featured in Netflix documentary American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden, which was released in May this year, though there were claims in the doc itself that he wasn't responsible for the assassination.
Another SEAL named Matt Bissonnette claimed it was he who shot the terrorist-leader, despite O'Neill's claims over the previous 14-or-so years.
But this new suit claims that Florida residents Hoover, 37, and Tucker, 45, who are also military veterans, started their 'smear campaign' to get clicks on their YouTube channel.
During an episode of their podcast on 9 August, Tucker stated: "Besides the Rob O’Neill who didn’t kill bin Laden."
He later added: "No, he didn’t kill bin Laden! It is the worst-kept secret in all of special ops... I am not going to say, 'Oh, yeah, I was on the mission'. I’d be as big a liar as Rob O’Neill."
The podcast host claimed he had friends who were on the same mission that were too professional to contradict O'Neill's recollection of things, though they also didn't admit that he killed bin Laden.
Part of the suit states that O'Neill was part of SEAL Team Six for Operation Neptune’s Spear and was personally responsible for shooting the terrorist leader who was behind the horrific 9/11 attacks.
Speaking to the New York Post, O'Neill said that he had one other person in front of him during the mission, recalling: “He went one direction at the top of the stairs to confront what he thought was a suicide bomber. I turned the other way, and Osama bin Laden was standing there, and so I shot him three times.
"I killed Osama bin Laden."
He further reiterated that what the podcasters were claiming 'is not true at all', as Hoover even claimed in an April 2024 episode of the Antihero Broadcast that O'Neill was backtracking on the sequence of events.
The host said: "He is going from saying that he was the one that killed Osama bin Laden with two rounds and a round to the body or something like that … was very specific with his rounds,
"Now he is going on an outlet saying his team killed and that he shot bin Laden."
Tucker even claimed the former SEAL was 'the last guy to put a round in bin Laden', more recently speaking on his new podcast Tier1 last month, claiming that he hadn't been sued by O'Neill yet, which was supposed 'proof' that he was right about him.
O'Neill said that the pair 'mention me all the time' and if a lawsuit is 'what it takes to stop it, than this is what I’m doing', with the suit claiming that the veterans didn't even carry out 'basic due diligence' before the alleged slander.
He added: “The vet-on-vet thing has gotten a little bit out of control, and I would like to have it stop. I would like to set a precedent. We shouldn’t be doing this to each other publicly. We should be doing it privately.”
The suit says that the defamatory claims have damaged O'Neill's career and reputation, as he had fewer speaking engagement opportunities, among other things, while causing him 'psychological and physiological harm, in addition to embarrassment'.
O'Neill plans to use any financial gains from the lawsuit for veterans with PTSD who need treatment.
Speaking to the publication, Tucker claimed that the suit 'will go nowhere' and that 'it's just for sure', standing by his claims about the Navy SEAL's story, claiming that men who were there during the shooting have also questioned his recollection, with one since contradicting it in a book and another making the claim in a now-deleted tweet.
Topics: Osama bin Laden, US News, Army, Podcast, Crime
Joshua Nair