Marty Singer, who has developed a reputation as a "guard dog" for Hollywood clients, threatened a defamation suit against Eastwood and Warner Bros. for the film's alleged portrayal of late AJC reporter Kathy Scruggs having sex with an FBI agent to get a scoop on Richard Jewell. Jewell was wrongly suspected of committing the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.
"It is highly ironic that a film purporting to tell a tragic story of how the reputation of an FBI suspect was grievously tarnished appears bent on a path to severely tarnish the reputation of the AJC, a newspaper with a respected 150-year-old publishing legacy," Singer said in a letter threatening the defamation suit.