Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad Graphically Threatens to Mow Down Opponents like "Puppies Before a Machine Gun"

Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad said he will mow down his opposition like "puppies before a machine gun." Dev Pragad photo, Ryan Lee

Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad is facing powerful accusations of having swept all media and business ethics under the carpet by leveraging his own newsroom to launch a "nuclear bomb" against adversaries with intent to take sole control of the company.

Court research indicates that on Thursday, Newsweek's parent company digital media publisher IBTimes filed a lawsuit against Pragad, alleging that his deceit actually began in 2018 when he was entrusted to manage the company, and he has been scheming to take over the company ever since.

The damning lawsuit alleges that when IBTimes ran into legal troubles in 2016, Pragad seized on that "opportunity" and convinced those around him to spin-off the magazine into an entity that he controlled. That motive, the lawsuit alleges, was recently evidenced with Pragad using the Newsweek newsroom to launch scathing attacks on Johnathan Davis, the other shareholder of Newsweek.

The actions of Dev Pragad, who publicly champions Newsweek's journalism independence and integrity, begs the question - is he two-faced? The IBTimes lawsuit appears to suggest so - that Pragad has engaged in a carefully calculated and deceitful plan to pull the wool over the eyes of the world, including Harvard University, the Poynter Institute, and his own newsroom, and portray himself as the owner and savior of the newspaper - which he allegedly isn't, according to the suit.

Newsweek Newsroom Hijacked by Pragad

Earlier in 2022, Pragad began to voice his threats against the other shareholder of Newsweek, Johnathan Davis, and threatened to leverage Newsweek's reporters against him if he did not give Pragad the company.

In a text message exchange that this correspondent has seen, an anonymous source shared a recent conversation with Pragad, in which the Newsweek CEO told a friend that he is "inseparable from Newsweek" and he will "detonate a nuclear bomb and kill [Davis and his associates]." He further bragged that he has "a lot of lawyers," and that his adversaries would be like "puppies in front of a machine gun" because "I am a PhD."

Dev Pragad photo, Ryan Lee — Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad threatened opposition with a "congressional" investigation if he didn't get the deal he wanted. Dev Pragad photo, Source: Ryan Lee

Pragad continued with the "nuclear bomb" threats a few days later: "This is nuclear bomb. Don't engage if you don't know how to deal with a nuclear bomb. If it goes off, it will nuke everyone. And it's the end. I don't want that to happen and for this to happen unintentionally coz some silly people who don't know what they are doing start tinkering. There is nothing they can do. It will just blow up on their face if they try to do anything. This may trigger a congressional investigation in Olivet. I'm so close to congress and senators and they love what I'm doing at Newsweek. They are all watching so closely along with world leaders."

As reported earlier today by HNGN, Dev Pragad went on to say that he would release a damaging article against Davis, against the church that Davis attends, and against Olivet University where Davis' wife worked, saying, "I'll go to the media about Olivet University raid by DHS for human trafficking to protect myself."

Late April 2022, Pragad followed through with his threat.

Newsweek authors Naveed Jamali and Tom O'Connor ran a peculiar story titled "Christian University at the Center of Federal Trafficking and Fraud Probe" which reported on federal authorities visiting the campus of the small, California-based bible college.

Oddly enough, the actual event took place more than one year before Newsweek wrote the article, making it particularly untimely for an organization with "News" in its name - yet, the timing perfectly matched Pragad's threats, the lawsuit alleges. And with no other media writing about the event, neither at the time of the event, nor after Newsweek's publishing, the newsworthiness of and motives behind the article are called into question.

"You should be aware that your CEO Dev Pragad is attempting to leverage the newsroom and yourselves for his personal advantage in a corporate shareholder dispute," Davis, the Newsweek shareholder, said at the time to Newsweek. "He has said publicly and privately that he wants my shares and full control of the company."

Upon hearing this serious claim, Newsweek failed to confirm or even investigate the claim, instead claiming Pragad was "unreachable" despite being the CEO of Newsweek itself.

Pragad himself did take on the role of investigative reporter though. Immediately following the article, the CEO of Newsweek was seen reaching out to various former students who attended the university.

Utter Newsroom Corruption

Apparently unhappy with results of his first article, with Davis firmly undaunted in relinquishing any share of the Newsweek ownership or his board position, Pragad and his newsroom attempted again to do harm to Davis and to target Davis' church.

This time, Jamali teamed up with Alex J. Rouhandeh, a purported "national security reporter" to write "Chinese Pastor's Arrest Ordered as Feds Circle Olivet Christian Sect" on June 27. This time, the article focused on an individual who graduated from the university nearly a decade ago in 2014, and was charged with selling Chinatown-like knockoff bracelets online for "$50 to $100."

The incident allegedly happened in 2019, even less timely than the topic of their first article with a full three years passing between it and the "news" article. Jamali and Rouhandeh apparently strained to connect the story to Olivet, the church denomination targeted by Dev Pragad's ongoing attacks, with the most notable revelation being the journalists' own admission about the lengths to which they would go to influence the agencies they were speaking to. The North Carolina Secretary of State's office, the prosecuting agency, stated in the article that it "was unaware of Lan's connection to Olivet until Newsweek sought comment on the link in May."

Tellingly, the article stayed on as the main headline story of the Newsweek.com homepage for hours, even being published as the top story in Newsweek's newsletter the next day. Despite the G7 meetings, Ukraine's escalating war, and historic overturning of Roe v. Wade, Newsweek editors Jamali and Nancy Cooper deemed this to be the most important story in the world on June 27, 2022.

While it was supposed to be a heavy hitting piece, readers saw right through it.

Screengrab of Readers commenting the article — (Photo : Screen grab by Ryan Lee of Newsweek readers commenting on the Naveed Jamali's hit piece) (Photo : Screen grab by Ryan Lee of Newsweek readers commenting on the Naveed Jamali's hit piece)

Editor's note: HNGN was registered by Davis in 2016, before he divested the publication in 2018. HNGN was an advertisement partner of Newsweek during 2017 and 2018, a period when Dev Pragad was the CEO of Newsweek. Ryan Lee is an acquaintance of Dev Pragad, and is a member of the same church that Davis attends. Pragad left the church just before Newsweek articles were published.