A California television consultant sued Al Gore and other executives at Current TV claiming they stole his idea to sell the cable network to the Arabic news company Al-Jazeera.
John Terenzio, filed suit Tuesday at the San Francisco Superior Court demanding $5 million for his services that he says made the $500 million purchase of Current TV by Al-Jazeera possible, the Associated Press reports.
Terenzio claims he met with Current TV board member Richard Blum in July and showed him a PowerPoint presentation detailing the possibility of a successful sale to Al-Jazeera that included "a step-by-step approach for making the sale of the liberal media outlet to Al-Jazeera palatable to U.S. lawmakers, pro-Israel factions, cable operators and, most importantly, the American public."
Terenzio believed his proposal was struck down by Gore because of political reasons. Al-Jazeera is owned by the Qatar government. Terenzio didn't know that the deal in fact went through until officials with Al-Jazeera made it public in January.
Gore and Current TV representatives did not comment about the lawsuit.
Current TV was founded in 2005, a majority stake of the network is owned by Gore, Joel Hyatt, investor Ron Burkle, and Comcast Corp..
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