gateway 2 jim hoft

---

bak --> 2 1 24 primary

mofo on disinfo lawsuit

ESCALATOR OF FEVER SWAP BS

SEE OATHKEEPER PVT ARMY INSURRECTION 11 25 = FASCISM BROWNSHIRTS

MERRI OK

see kari lake BS

20-Plus Times Jim Hoft And The Gateway Pundit Were Absurdly Wrong 01/25/17

oops see other node

---

---

---

-=-=

MMA

The Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft: Jack Smith “should be hung, don't you think?”

Hoft: “He's so rotten. It's so bad.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 10/06/26

As Media Matters previously reported:

Jim Hoft's website, The Gateway Pundit,“is one of the worst purveyors of false information on the internet.” The website — to which Hoft's brother, Joe, is a contributor — reportedly became “a favorite news source” of President Donald Trump after it “pushed false claims of a stolen election“ for years following the presidential election of 2020.

Video

Citation

From the October 6, 2026, edition of The State of Freedom, streamed on Rumble

CHRIS ALEXANDER (CO-HOST): What about Jack Smith, Joe? What about Jack Smith?

JOE HOFT (THE GATEWAY PUNDIT): What a — he should be hung, don't you think? I mean, he's so rotten. It's so bad.

DANIELLE WALKER (CO-HOST): Yeah.

HOFT: He's rotten. He's been doing — you know, he — there was a senator years ago that he took down. Do you remember that? It was under Obama. I think Obama's first year, there was a Republican senator out of Alaska they made a bunch of lies about. He eventually, I think, got either kicked out or resigned, and that gave Obama a 60-40 Senate, or he could push through with whatever he wanted. And Jack Smith was behind that takedown, and the guy died. And then he — they found out, no, he didn't do anything wrong.

ALEXANDER: Yeah.

HOFT: And that was Jack Smith so —

WALKER: How evil. How evil.

//

The Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft calls for the National Guard to remove judges and “throw them behind bars”

09/05/25 1:32 PM EDT

20-Plus Times Jim Hoft And The Gateway Pundit Were Absurdly Wrong

01/25/17 10:21 AM EST

Calls for retaliatory prosecutions are the next phase in the right’s rewriting of January 6

10/08/2

---

mma 7 26

1. ### Real America's Voice host Wayne Allyn Root lays out a plan for an emergency executive order on elections

06/30/26

Cleta Mitchell reacts to the Supreme Court late-arriving mail-in ballots ruling by saying it's time to challenge early voting

Mitchell to Steve Bannon: “There's a lot in that opinion that would suggest that we ought to be challenging early voting. We ought to be challenging unfettered absentee voting.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 06/30/26

Video

Citation

From the June 29, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): You know, I think that - I don't know, but Amy Coney Barrett writes for the majority, and this is what is shocking, is that there are five justices of the Supreme Court who believe and who wrote in this opinion that there is a difference between casting the ballot, that is when the voters make their choice, and when the ballot is received. That makes no sense.

Frankly, according to their opinion, I actually think that this gives us good grounds to challenge early voting and to say that voting is — there's a lot in that opinion that would suggest that we ought to be challenging early voting. We ought to be challenging unfettered absentee voting because they also point out, which Marc Elias conveniently forgets to discuss, that — repeatedly they referred to the fact that the ballots had to be postmarked on or before election day.

Well, California doesn't require a postmark. I think we ought to challenge that. I think that what we have to do on our side is that we have to do what the left has done. And I know that that when Stephen Miller started America First Legal Foundation after — in 2021, the idea was to build a judicial attack mob that's similar to what the left has. And we haven't really done that.

I mean, they — there are — we've done a lot better. But these guys, the left challenges everything. And we are getting these terrible decisions from these awful left-wing trial court judges all over the country. And then this decision — to me, the worst part of this decision is it emboldens these left-wing crazy judges that are inhabiting our courts all over the country. That's the constitutional crisis we face, is all of these judges.

But I will tell you that I think that there is a roadmap in this. Unfortunately, it requires congressional action and we see how terrible Congress, the US Senate is. So I mean it's, we have a crisis because the judges are not letting the president do his job and they're trying to do Congress's job.

---

bannon mma 7 26

June 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): SAVE America Act — a lot of people are saying, hey, do we have time to implement it? Are we going to have lawsuits? But President Trump is driving forward. We're a huge proponent of that.

We also know that Bill Pulte is at DNI, and that John Solomon of Real America's Voice is leading a task force on declassification. And yesterday, Pulte hired, from the RNC, as his chief of staff, one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC to be his chief of staff. So he's telling you where he's — signaling where he's going on this.

My understanding — I don't have any access to this classified information — but my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election.-

---

mma

Election deniers reach a fever pitch calling for a “national emergency” declaration so Trump can give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms

Tina Peters: “I believe Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say ... that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections”

Written by Alex Kaplan

Published 06/30/26

After President Donald Trump issued an executive order at the end of March aimed at stopping supposed fraud with mail-in ballots, election deniers have urged Trump to declare a national emergency to allow a federal takeover of election processes. On June 24, Trump echoed those calls and suggested that passing a bill to supposedly combat election fraud is a “national emergency.”

Media figures who have pushed claims of widespread election fraud — some of whom say they have been involved with drafting such an order that is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk” — have urged Trump to give himself “king-like powers” by implementing the proposal, as it would supposedly empower Trump to “be able to make the rules” and use the National Guard to oversee midterm elections. Others claim that they have asked Trump directly to invoke the proposed order, saying it would be “very easy” for the president to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”

Election deniers drafted executive order declaring a national emergency to implement election policies and Trump issued an executive order on mail-in ballots

• Since at least April 2025, a group of right-wing figures and Trump allies have called for Trump to issue a national emergency declaration “to make sure that the elections in 2026 are secure,” even proposing and circulating among Trump administration officials a draft executive order that would “declare a national emergency” and “empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Those involved include attorney Peter Ticktin, former Infowars staffer Jerome Corsi, and QAnon influencer Wayne Willot, known online as Juan O. Savin.

During his second term, Trump has issued two executive orders related to elections. As explained by The New York Times, a March 2025 order instructs the Election Assistance Commission “to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and directs state or local officials to record and verify the information,” and it “seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.” Multiple federal judges have since blocked that executive order.

On March 31, Trump issued an executive order that directs the Department of Homeland Security to “compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State,” and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to “transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List.” NPR reported that “election experts said the order was unconstitutional.” After Trump signed the executive order, election deniers hailed it as a “win” that will leave Democrats “toast.” On June 25, a federal judge blocked parts of the order.

While Trump reportedly “shrugged off reports that he could consider declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections,” he has repeatedly advocated for the SAVE America Act, which would put restrictions on voting but has struggled to pass in Congress. On June 24, Trump canceled plans to sign bipartisan housing legislation “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”

• ## Since Trump issued the executive order in March, election deniers have repeatedly urged Trump to also declare a national emergency ahead of the midterms

• • Savin, who wasinvolvedwith the proposed national emergency executive order,claimedthat Trump “is going to have to declare a national election emergency that gives him essentially king-like powers within the area of elections.”He added that the proposal is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk, the 17-page order which my team put together within the coalition.” He’s also claimed that Trump “wants to sign it and [is] having the legal people review it to make sure that we got everything right,” may try to issue the order in “bite-sized pieces,” and that Trump has “tried to break up” the proposed order and it will “ultimately … get sealed in one summary executive order at some point in time, but they’ve taken a couple of pieces out and done them individually.”

• • Ticktin, also supposedlyinvolvedwith the proposed order,saida national “election emergency” would allow Trump to “be able to make the rules.” He also said that it would give Trump “additional forces of some sort” like the National Guard to have “camera observation” of ballots and make “sure the counting is done and done correctly.”

• • Corsi, another figure supposedlyinvolvedwith the proposed order, said that hebelievedTrump is “very strategically laying out his plans” with multiple executive orders related to elections and “saving his powder for that one last executive order, which will come much closer to the election.” He also claimed that the “nightmare” of Trump’s impeachment and removal by a Democratic-controlled Congress “can be avoided by that kind of an executive order” and Trump’s authority under the national emergency could “extend to utilizing the National Guard to intervene in states that didn’t cooperate.” During another appearance in which he discussed the order, Corsi claimed that “politically, Donald Trump cannot afford to let the 2026 midterm election occur under the current rules because he will most certainly lose. And that’s not going to happen.”

• • Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peterssaidduring a stream following her release from prison that she had spoken with the president and she believes “Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say that they are — that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections.”She also said on a separate podcast that “we need to get rid of the machines” and “mail-in ballots,” and Trump “needs to sign an executive order ... saying it’s unconstitutional that these things are allowed to be done.” Corsi has also claimed that Peters will “play a major role in one of the key factors in Trump ultimately declaring the need for the elections to be supervised by the federal government.”

• • Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO who has been aprominent fundraiserfor election denial efforts andplayed a rolein trying to overturn the 2020 election,saidTrump should announce a national emergency to “run our election this year ... and teach them how to run them in Iraq.”He later added that he hoped the president would declare an emergency “this summer.” Byrne is supposedly involved with the proposed order.

• • Savin’s supposed “chief of staff,”Matt Meck,saidthe proposed national emergency order is “what we think needs to be done.”Meck — a board member of Fight Voter Fraud Inc., an organization which “has been criticized in the past for repeatedly advancing unfounded claims based on its misinterpretation of voter registration information and other data” — is supposedly involved with the proposed order.

• • Mark Cook, described byColorado Newslineas one “of the most influential election deniers in Colorado,”said, “How much more of an emergency do we need to establish here? It's right in our faces, and we have to do something immediately.” Cook is also supposedly involved with the proposed order.

• • Laura Scharr, thefounderof South Carolina Safe Elections,saidthat “it can’t just be an executive order — they’ve blown off the other two executive orders [related to elections] that Trump put out.”She added, “The only way is through a national emergency.” Scharr, who is supposedly involved with the proposed order, concluded that “it must be a national emergency. It has to happen as soon as possible.”

• • Wayne Allyn Root — a radio host who hasclaimedthat mail-in ballots were used to “rig and steal the 2020 election” and who the Nevada Currentreportedis “known for subscribing to conspiracy theories”— has authoredmultiple columnsfor The Gateway Pundit advocating for the proposed national emergency. On his show, Root claimed to have texted the president about a national emergency and he said that he would urge Trump to “sign Jerome Corsi’s executive order on election integrity, Mr. President, and do it now.”

• • John Goodman, who ispart ofthe “Florida Election Integrity Committee,”saidonStern American's “election integrity call” that “if you like the SAVE Act, you should love the national security emergency even more because it's like the SAVE Act on steroids,“ and that such a declaration “will be the trick, unobstructed.” He has also claimed that the call for “a national security emergency on elections” based on his ideas has been “very well received by Trump's legal team.” Root has said that “John Goodman, my election expert, has been telling me” that a national emergency is “the way to go,” and he claimed that Goodman “sent me all the reasons … as to what I could pass on to President Trump to push the urgency of a executive order to deal with election fraud and election integrity.” Corsi has also claimed to “have been working with” Goodman.

• • Linda Szynkowicz, thefounderof Fight Voter Fraud Inc.,claimedon her podcast that the Constitution “gives the president the power in a state of emergency from foreign intervention in the elections,” for which “we have more than enough proof.” She made this claim in response to Goodman’s call for a “national security emergency.”

• • David Clements, a podcaster“criss-crossed the country to who hasevangelize about purported election fraud,”saidat a local Republican event in Oregon that it would be “very easy” for Trump to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”During a podcast appearance with Corsi, Clements also claimed that he did not see “any scenario where we can run a clean election without the aid of the National Guard.”

• • Douglas Franksaidin an appearance alongside Ticktin on theTake Your Power Back Showthat “we have people all over the country ready to support the president in case he needs to make some kind of emergency order.” The Los Angeles Times reported that Frank has given speeches across the country as “part of a multi-pronged effort by the election denial movement to make a significant impact on future elections.”

• • Tamara Favorito — who reportedlyhelps runthe “election integrity” organization VoterGA with her husband, Garland Favorito —saidon a stream that Trump “needs to hurry” to declare a national emergency “because November is not very far away.” After being asked if there was “enough time before the midterms for” Trump to declare “the national security emergency and executive orders that mandate the things that make elections safe,” Favorito responded that “if the election officials in the counties put their mind to it, I believe it can be done, but he [Trump] needs to hurry because November is not very far away.”

• • Gregory Stenstrom, a Pennsylvaniapoll watcherwhoclaimedwithout evidence that he saw votes for Biden being uploaded to voting machines in 2020,saidonStern American’s “election integrity call” that “Trump is required to take executive action.” Stenstrom said, “In the executive order that is being drafted by Peter Ticktin and Mr. Corsi, they can refer to multiple cases within the courts right now that show that President Trump is required to take executive action because certain secretaries of state and certain county officials in key counties are cheating and not complying with the law.” Stenstrom was also part of a lawsuit that reportedly alleged that there was “negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation related to the 2020 general election,” but which a local district attorney said there was “no merit found to the claims.”

• ## Why this sounds familiar and continues to matter

• Trump and his right-wing media allies have been pushing claims of election fraud for years. During Trump's second term, election deniers known for promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been given access to the levers of power — feeding already debunked claims to the Department of Justice, taking roles in the administration, and contributing to federal investigations. Some, like Peters, Byrne, and Martin Rodil, claimed they have spoken directly with Trump and administration officials. (The Guardian reported Rodil became a source “for the Trump camp and ultimately for investigators and … promoted two major allegations about Venezuela.”)

As the 2026 midterms approach, right-wing media and the Trump administration appear to have ramped up their efforts to undermine the midterm elections — invoking repeatedly debunked conspiracy theoriesabout widespread election fraud in the U.S., relying on one-off incidents and hypotheticals that are often exaggerated or misleading, and pushing for Trump policy priorities like the SAVE America Act.

Election deniers have already claimed that primaries for the 2026 midterms have featured election fraud, and Savin himself has claimed that the primary elections have been “laying the groundwork” for Trump to declare a national emergency — language which the president has now repeated.

//

1. ### Right-wing figures and Trump allies are calling for Trump to declare a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud

:{10/28/25

2. ### Election deniers have reportedly coordinated with the Trump White House on a draft executive order declaring a “national emergency” over elections

:{02/26/26

3. ### At election denial summit, media figures endorse ICE at the polls and suggest executing a “prominent traitor” from the deep state “to improve our elections”

06/25/26

---

---

OMFG

“I AM ALLOWED TO DO IT”

an 11 25 day after pardon 77 trump coup liars

One participant in the January 6, 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol is now calling on President Donald Trump to establish an armed vigilante squad that exclusively reports to the president.

During a recent appearance on the far-right Gateway Pundit podcast, Stewart Rhodes — who founded the "Oath Keepers" paramilitary group — told host Jim Hoft that not only was he relaunching the Oath Keepers, but issuing a direct call to Trump to deputize his loyal followers to enforce federal laws. Progressive group Media Matters for America noted that Rhodes explicitly urged Trump to use a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.

"President Trump, as commander in chief, always has absolute authority to call all of us up as the militia ... if he sees it necessary, especially for three purposes: to repel invasions, to suppress insurrections and to execute the laws of the union," Rhodes said. "... So from the bottom, from down the rank and file, we can let President Trump know that we're ready to serve, encourage him to do that, call us up as a militia, order us all to come together in our counties under his command, which gives you complete legal sanction to do what you're doing."

Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 of the U.S. Constitution specifically stipulates that Congress – not the president — has the power "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress." It's unlikely that the federal judiciary would allow Trump to do what Rhodes asked, particularly after a judge ruled earlier this year that Trump's deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (which prohibits the military from being used as a domestic police force).

Rhodes' insistence that his group be used as a private army to serve at the pleasure of the president is particularly ironic given the Oath Keepers' history. George Washington University noted that Rhodes formed the Oath Keepers in 2009 "in response to a perceived conspiracy by the U.S. government to facilitate total economic collapse, thereby providing the pretext to imposing martial law and a system of totalitarian control." But if Trump granted Rhodes' request, the Oath Keepers would in fact be used to impose the same martial law his group ostensibly opposes.

In 2023, Rhodes and another Oath Keepers leader were each sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for their role in the January 6 insurrection — the most serious charge given to all of the roughly 1,500 defendants. During Rhodes' trial, prosecutors played a recording of him on January 10, 2021 expressing regret that more January 6 participants didn't bring weapons.

"My only regret is that they should have brought rifles," Rhodes said, adding that his group could have "fixed it right then and there" if they were armed. Trump pardoned Rhodes and all other January 6 defendants on the first day of his second term.

:{---

---

MMA

The Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft calls for the National Guard to remove judges and “throw them behind bars”

Hoft: “You cannot have the rulings that these judges have and and be of a sound mind. And you're a criminal. And same with Jerome Powell.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 09/05/25

Jim Hoft's website, The Gateway Pundit,“is one of the worst purveyors of false information on the internet.” The website — to which Hoft's brother, Joe, is a contributor — reportedly became “a favorite news source” of President Donald Trump after it “pushed false claims of a stolen election“ for years following the presidential election of 2020.

During Trump's second term, the website has enjoyed access to the administration. In August, Jim Hoft interviewed Vice President JD Vance, during which Vance said the far-right website was “so important,” and a Media Matters review found that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called on The Gateway Pundit 5 times at press briefings during the first three months of Trump's second term, more than The Washington Post (4) or The Associated Press (3).

On September 3, Joe Hoft appeared on For the Love of Freedom with Danielle Walker and said that judges, who he alleges are “sabotaging our legal system,” and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell are “criminal” and need to be held accountable.

Video

Share

Citation

From the September 3, 2025, edition of For the Love of Freedom with Danielle Walker, streamed on Rumble

JOE HOFT (THE GATEWAY PUNDIT): We have to deal with our judges. We have to get rid of these corrupt judges. We have to remove them from office. If it means, in my opinion, and I don't care what people say, if it means we need to send the National Guard in to remove these people from their office and throw them behind bars, then we have to. These people are not working for the country. They are sabotaging our legal system, destroying it by making these judgments that are grabbed out of nowhere because the judge just is a radical, radical, nonethical, disgusting human being. I think the same thing with Jerome Powell.

...

The judges need to be removed from office, and I think it charged. They need to be, we need to hold them accountable. You cannot have the rulings that these judges have and and be of a sound mind. And you're a criminal. And same with Jerome Powell. He's costing this country a trillion dollars a year by not lowering these rates.

Trillion dollars to every, you know, split amongst all Americans. Trillion dollars because he won't lower those rates, which should be lowered significantly to the point that we'd save a trillion. And that would really help the economy. It helped the housing industry and all this. I don't know why real estate agents aren't screaming for this guy to lower the rates.

And he won't because he's a vile, disgusting human being. He did the same thing with Trump his first term, raised the rates, kept raising them, and just crashed the, almost crashed the economy himself. And so these kind of people, we just cannot allow them to continue. They're too damaging and the damage is too severe.

20-Plus Times Jim Hoft And The Gateway Pundit Were Absurdly Wrong

01/25/17

2. ### Former Trump aide: “Gateway Pundit was one reliable place he knew he could go for validation, and maybe even some new ideas”

01/03/24 12:58 PM EST

3. ### By the numbers: As Trump snubs legacy media, data shows his press briefings elevate right-wing outlets

04/25/25

---

mma

At Gateway Pundit conference, former Trump attorney Peter Ticktin says that he “wouldn’t be very surprised” if there’s “an emergency called” before the next election}:

08/25/25 7:06 PM EDT](https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/gateway-pundit-conference-former-trump-attorney-peter-ticktin-says-he)

===

an 11 24

With Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his allies in key swing states already questioning voting processes and claiming Democrats and election officials are "cheating" days before Election Day, one policy strategist said Thursday that election deniers took one lesson away from their attempts to overturn the 2020 results.

"We saw it in 2020 and I think the lesson Trump and his allies have learned since is that they have to sow these ideas early," Kyle Miller of the advocacy group Protect Democracy toldReuters.

Trump wrote on social media Thursday that "we caught them CHEATING BIG" in Miller's home state of Pennsylvania, and calling for criminal prosecutions, but election officials have said there is no evidence of fraud in early voting processes that took place in October.

Trump's campaign took legal action on Wednesday against Bucks County election officials, saying voters wanting to submit early mail-in ballots had been unfairly turned away when authorities told them the early voting deadline had passed. A judge ordered the county to extend voting by one day.

"This week, we are seeing that Donald Trump is clearly worried that he's going to lose the election," said a campaign official for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday. "How do we know that? Well, we know it because he's ramping up baseless claims of election fraud and irregularities."

Election officials discovered potentially fraudulent registrations in Lancaster and York counties, which appeared to have been filled out in the same handwriting. But authorities said the flagged registrations did not raise the risk that ballots would be cast fraudulently and were likely tied to a paid "large-scale canvassing operation."

"This is a sign that the built-in safeguards in our voter registration process are working," Al Schmidt, secretary of the commonwealth, told Reuters.

Nevertheless, Trump and his allies have seized on the incidents as evidence that Democrats are attempting to steal the election.

Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have both continued spreading the "Big Lie" that Trump did not lose the 2020 election, and both have expressed doubt that they will accept an election loss if Harris is declared the winner.

The former president said he will accept the results only if he finds them to be "fair and legal and good," and told rally attendees in September that "the only way we're gonna lose" would be if Democrats cheat.

Vance said in October that he would accept the results in Pennsylvania, a primary focus of election deniers in 2020, if "only legal American citizens vote," alluding to a push made by Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this year to claim voting by noncitizens is rampant in U.S. elections—even though it is prohibited by federal law.

Republicans in the U.S. House passed a bill earlier this year to stop noncitizens from voting—legislation that experts say was designed to spread a false narrative that could then be used to deny the election results.

"This will be one of the primary, but among many, false claims made if Trump loses," David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, toldThe Guardian. "And it will be false, but it still could be dangerous because it could incite his supporters to believing a totally secure election was stolen."

In Michigan on Wednesday, The New YorkTimesreportedthat a "well-organized network of election denial activists" amplified the news of a small glitch in voting report which made it appear that a single voter's name was used to cast multiple ballots. The error was quickly corrected, but the far-right website* Gateway Pundit* claimed it had a "bombshell" report about absentee ballots in the state.

The Guardianon Friday also reported on dozens polls being conducted by Republican-aligned groups in the last days before the election, which have shown Trump with a decisive lead—contrasting with highly regarded nonpartisan polls that have consistently shown Trump and Harris in a dead heat.

GOP-aligned groups have released 37 polls in recent days, according to a New York Times study, with all but seven showing Trump in the lead.

One survey by the Trafalgar Group had Trump winning by three points in North Carolina, while a CNN poll showed Harris winning by one point in the battleground state.

Trump told supporters at a New Mexico campaign event on Thursday that he is "leading big in the polls, all of the polls."

With 63% of Republicansreporting earlier this year that they believed Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election, Trump's claims about polling may be enough to garner significant support for another attempt to overturn the election results after November 5, experts say.

"It is vital to Donald Trump's effort if he tries to cheat and overturn the election results, he needs to have data showing that somehow he was winning the election," Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told The Guardian. "The reason we have to call this out is that Donald Trump needs to go into Election Day with some set of data showing him winning, so if he loses, he can say we cheated."

On Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said it is all but certain that Trump will declare victory on November 5 and that he is setting the stage to accuse Democrats of "vote stealing."

At least 35 election officials who have refused to certify elections since 2020 are now serving on election boards, according to a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Pro-democracy advocates say the recent GOP-aligned polls, baseless claims about illegal voting, and laser focus on minor errors in voting processes are all likely to be used by Trump and his allies to stop the certification of a potential Harris victory.

"The effort to try to subvert the outcome," Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice told The Guardian,"is more thought-out, more strategic, more organized, more coordinated [than] in 2020."

===

mma

October 14, 2024 edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

NATALIE WINTERS (HOST): Conspiracies and lies – well those are the harsh words that they have for Jim Hoft over at the Gateway Pundit, it’s quite interesting, they never talked about the overseas vote until you guys started exposing them, which I would say that there’s what, all the hallmarks of a conspiracy.

…

JIM HOFT (GUEST): This could be anybody from the Congo or Belize or Ukraine or Cambodia who’s filling these out. We don’t know. All they need is an email address. That’s why we waved the red flag on this and we’ve been putting up several articles on this and that’s also why, and this is very upsetting to them and this is why they start talking about this on MSNBC.

At least three states now have lawsuits since our first reporting against this UOCAVA system – North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and I know of another state that’s going to have a lawsuit soon against this fraudulent system the Democrats are using to take the 2024 election.

…

I do believe though that every battleground state, every swing state should be pushing to have a lawsuit in their state against this very fraudulent system.

===

mma

A conspiracy theory about overseas voting spread from an election denial website to Trump — and now to the MAGA media infrastructure

Conservative pundits are mischaracterizing a longstanding law that allows US citizens abroad to vote

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Madeline Peltz

Published 10/10/24

Right-wing media figures have amplified a conspiracy theory that Democrats are attempting to steal the 2024 election by weaponizing a longstanding law that allows Americans overseas to vote.

As researchers at the University of Washington explained, right-wing junk site The Gateway Pundit appears to have originated the false claim in early September, and former President Donald Trump promoted it later that month.

The September 6 Gateway Pundit blog mischaracterized a Democratic Party press release announcing a plan to register Americans living overseas to vote through a 1986 law known as the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). The article’s headline falsely claimed that the get-out-the-vote effort — a first from the Democratic National Committee — was an “Undetectable Way to Steal the Election From Trump,” rather than a legal avenue to reach voters.

“The Democrats are talking about how they’re working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on September 23. “Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT!”

David Becker, the founder and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation and Research, told The Associated Press, “In over 25 years of working in elections, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and with election officials of both parties, I don’t recall any of them, or any elected leader from either party, ever denigrating this important program, until Trump’s false claims this week.”

Shortly after Trump endorsed The Gateway Pundit’s misinformation, Republican officials in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan filed lawsuits challenging aspects of UOCAVA and related laws designed to facilitate overseas voting. Cleta Mitchell, a prominent election denier and former Trump adviser who attempted to overturn the 2020 election, said on a right-wing radio show that she’d “helped to organize” the suits in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, adding that she hoped to file another, similar suit in Wisconsin.

Several right-wing media outlets and pundits further spread the conspiracy theory that Democrats will “exploit” UOCAVA to register “bad actors” ahead of the 2024 election.

• The Gateway Pundit has published several additional articles mischaracterizing UOCAVA:

• • One article claimed that UOCAVA “could very well be the key to how Democrats plan to steal our upcoming election from President Trump.”
  • Another stated that “UOCAVA opens the door to unlimited foreign voter voting.”
  • A third argued that Democrats were using UOCAVA to “exploit weaknesses in Federal law in order to use noncitizens as political pawns to achieve desired outcomes."

• True the Vote founder and election denial activist Catherine Engelbrecht cast doubt on overseas voting, suggesting it would be used by noncitizens and adding, “Without the data for citizenship, you cannot tell. It's outrageous.” (As the University of Washington researchers pointed out, state laws vary but overseas voters need to validate their eligibility prior to casting a ballot.) Engelbrecht concluded that “the fraud’s been institutionalized.”

• Claiming she “helped to organize” two lawsuits challenging overseas voting, Cleta Mitchell said without evidence that UOCAVA had been “exploited, and they’re literally getting people to lie and say that they’re overseas, or to say that they’re citizens, and the states are not checking at all.”

• Former Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington celebrated the Pennsylvania lawsuit, writing: “5 Congressman just filed a lawsuit in PA over Democrats refusal to verify identity in the overseas ballot program. There are 25,000 UOCAVA ballots in PA already for 2024 and only 3,600 —14% — are to military members and their family."

• • Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the founder of America First Legal, an anti-voting rights organization, also reposted Harrington’s thread.

• Right-wing website The National Pulse praised the Pennsylvania lawsuit as well, claiming the overseas voting process “could be open to bad actors.”

• Joel Barry, managing editor of right-wing satire site the Babylon Bee, wrote that UOCAVA is part of “the Democrat plan to steal elections using ‘overseas’ ballots.”

• Right-wing blog The Federalist baselessly warned of the potential for fraud, writing that it is “hypothetically possible to sit in Anytown, U.S.A., and request that a UOCAVA ballot be emailed to you, while claiming you are in another country.”

• Caroline Wren — an adviser to prominent election denier and Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake — criticized the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign for failing to file a lawsuit in Arizona challenging “the UOCAVA overseas ‘voters.’”

• Right-wing website Just the News wrote that “Republicans and election integrity advocates are sounding the alarm over possible fraud that could occur with absentee ballots sent from other countries.”

• Conservative activist and election denier Heather Honey appeared on a Rumble stream to baselessly claim that “some of the provisions” of UOCAVA are a little bit loosey goosey” and that Democrats and associated nongovernmental organizations are “not telling people on social media that there are citizenship requirements.” (At least two of the examples she used in her presentation included the word “citizen” in the advertisement.)

The right-wing targeting of UOCAVA comes against the backdrop of a larger conservative campaign to spread fear that noncitizens will vote in large numbers in November (there is no evidence to support that allegation, but Fox News and other right-wing networks have saturated their airwaves with it).

The GOP has its own outreach program to Americans abroad called Republicans Overseas — one of more than 100 conservative organizations on the advisory board of Project 2025, a sprawling right-wing effort to provide policy and staffing to a second Trump administration.

In 2021, Republicans Overseas vice chairman and CEO Solomon Yue — who is also a Republican National Committee member — wrote a resolution for the Oregon Republican Party that falsely claimed there was “growing evidence” that the January 6 insurrection was a “false flag” intended to “to discredit President Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans,” according to The New York Times.

===

grift

mma 1 24

Following news that a session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting would be focused on the World Health Organization’s preparations for a potential epidemic of a currently unknown pathogen dubbed “Disease X,” right-wing media figures pushed conspiracy theories about a supposed plan to kill off “excess population” and fearmongered over the possibility of another pandemic and lockdowns. Some sought to capitalize on the fear by selling “medical emergency kits” that contain an unproven COVID-19 treatment.

• For years, the WHO has been preparing for so-called “Disease X” — a potential undetermined pathogen that could cause a future epidemic

• • At the World Economic Forum’s January 2024 annual meeting at Davos, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus spoke about the need to prepare for an “unknown Disease X.” In the lead-up to the event, Ghebreyesus and the WHO claimed that Disease X could potentially result in “20 times more fatalities” than COVID-19. World Economic Forum, accessed [1/17/24]

• • Disease X is a placeholder name for a currently unknown pathogen that the WHO uses for hypothetical epidemic prevention planning. The WHO adopted the moniker “Disease X” in 2018. It stems from a series of epidemic prevention plans that began in 2015 in response to the 2014 Ebola crisis. WHO, accessed [3/1/20; The Economist, 3/23/18]

• ## Right-wing figures and social media users have fearmongered and spread conspiracy theories about Disease X

• • On his Infowars show, Alex Jones claimed that Disease X was a “virus scare power grab” by entities that he claimed “want control of our bodies.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Jones suggested there is a “Globalist Plan to Launch #DiseaseX to Install World Government.” Twitter/X, [1/17/24; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/17/24]

• • On Newsmax, disgraced Conservative Political Action Conference chair Matt Schlapp speculated that Disease X was a scheme to kill off “excess population”

because they “want less people.” Schlapp stated: “I think they must know something, and I’m not going to discount the fact that probably Disease X is a thing and could happen, and some people — as evil and dastardly as it sounds — thinks killing millions of people actually could be good for the rest of us who survive.” Additionally, host Chris Plante said that at the meeting, “globalists at Davos ... might not be preparing for imaginary situations, but rather assembling their next global power grab.” Newsmax, *Chris Plante The Right Squad*, [1/17/23; CNN, 12/16/23]

• • Conspiracy theorist Russell Brand posted an episode of his Stay Free livestream titled “‘Disease X Is Imminent!!’ The Next Pandemic Is Here?!” In the episode, Brand claimed that a supposed vaccine for Disease X was being developed “using technology that potentially caused the last pandemic, in a facility that also produces bioweapons.” Rumble, *Stay Free*, [1/15/24]

• • Conservative podcast host Graham Allen, whose show Dear America is exclusively on Rumble, suggested in a livestream that Disease X is a plan “to stop a Trump presidency and/or possibly take over the world.” Later in his stream, Allen’s co-host highlighted a user comment reading “COVID was a test run” for Disease X, and Allen agreed. Rumble, *Graham Allen’s Dear America*, [1/17/24, 1/17/24, accessed 1/10/24]

• • Users in private right-wing Facebook groups spread conspiracy theories about Disease X, sharing right-wing media coverage and claiming that “genocidal depopulation” and “lockdowns” are coming. Users shared right-wing articles and videos — including from The Gateway Pundit, Russell Brand, and Rumble videos — stoking fears about Disease X in groups with tens of thousands of members. Facebook, accessed [1/18/24]

• • Conspiracy theories about Disease X and imminent lockdowns also spread on far-right platforms such as Truth Social, Telegram, and 4chan. Conspiracy theorists and QAnon figures fearmongered that “Preparing for Disease X” was a top priority of the meeting in Davos, with QAnon influencer Jordan Sather writing on Truth Social, “TRY ANOTHER SCAMDEMIC YOU GLOBALIST SCUM.” On 4chan, users claimed that “Disease X is officially spreading, lockdowns incoming” and that “this time … restrictions will never be lifted.” On Telegram, anti-vaccine figure Sherri Tenpenny suggested that a vaccine for Disease X is under development. Truth Social, [1/11/24; 4chan, 1/16/24, 1/16/24; Telegram, 1/15/24; PolitiFact, accessed1/18/24]

• ## Right-wing figures are using fear of Disease X to sell “medical emergency kits”
  • Dr. Peter McCullough, who has spread conspiracy theories about COVID-19, used Disease X to promote an “emergency kit” that sells for $300 and includes ivermectin, which is an unproven COVID-19 treatment.McCullough is the “chief science officer” for The Wellness Company, a right-wing media-associated company that sells supplements. Discussing Disease X during a media appearance, McCullough said, “Wellness Company’s got a wonderful kit at home you can have.” Twitter/X, [1/17/24; The Daily Beast, 12/1/23; The Wellness Company, accessed 1/18/24; NIH, accessed 1/18/24]

• • The Gateway Pundit used Disease X to promote The Wellness Company’s “medical emergency kits.” In a “sponsored message” titled “‘DISEASE X’ — Are The Globalists Planning Another Pandemic?” The Gateway Pundit urged readers, “Don’t be caught unprepared for whatever the WEF has in mind” and “Don’t regret not acting today” in purchasing The Wellness Company’s emergency kits. The post stated, “The Wellness Company and their doctors are medical professionals that you can trust and their new medical emergency kits are the gold standard when it comes to keeping you safe and healthy.” The article also noted that Gateway Pundit would benefit from the sale of emergency kits. The Gateway Pundit, accessed [1/17/24]

• • The Wellness Company also sponsored an article in Breitbart, which encouraged readers to start “stocking up” on medications included in the “medical emergency kits.” The article urges readers to “protect you and your family from drug shortages, ‘Disease X,’ or whatever comes your way,” and it quotes anti-vaccine figure Dr. James Thorp, who claims that the WEF is “threatening us that there’s another pandemic coming.” Breitbart, accessed [1/18/24; Real Clear Politics, 2/24/23]

• • The Telegram channel for Steve Bannon’s War Room promoted a Gateway Pundit article that included promotion of The Wellness Company’s emergency kits. The post urges readers: “Before The Next Crisis Hits – Prepare With A Medical Emergency Kit (Includes Ivermectin and Z-Pak).” Telegram, [1/12/24; The Gateway Pundit, 1/12/24]

---

---

biz insider lrgit

far-right blogger Jim Hoft used The Gateway Pundit's company funds to buy himself a Porsche and an oceanside Florida condo

Misinformation

---

loomer fever swamp base of escalator

mma 1 24

re-birtherism

On January 8, former President Donald Trump shared a Gateway Pundit post on X falsely claiming that Trump’s former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is constitutionally disqualified from a “presidential or vice presidential candidacy.”

The false argument, which made its way to Trump through a far-right blog and a notoriously Islamophobic conspiracy theorist, follows a separate, simmering conservative media trend of calling Haley by her first name, Nimarata, rather than the middle name she goes by. Taken together, the two lines of commentary expose the racism behind some of pro-Trump media’s Haley coverage. This attack comes as Haley's polling numbers approach Trump's in New Hampshire.

The Gateway Pundit article the post is based on builds on a post from another pro-Trump blog, American Greatness, which itself pressed the same points as a blog from Rumble host and failed congressional candidate Laura Loomer: Since Haley’s parents weren’t U.S. citizens at the time of her birth, these conservative outlets argue, she is merely a birthright citizen, and not a “natural born citizen” as the Constitution requires for presidents and vice presidents.

This is simply not true: Haley is constitutionally eligible for either office, with her South Carolina birth qualifying her as a “natural born citizen.” The immigration status of her parents is legally irrelevant, despite right-wing media’s long-standing hatred for birthright citizenship and repeated attempts to use these arguments against enemy politicians.

On X (formerly Twitter), the author of the American Greatness piece credited Loomer’s “great investigative work” for having “uncovered” the fact of Haley’s parents’ citizenship -- a secret which Haley wrote about in her 2012 autobiography, and shared with a newspaper in 2015. Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone also promoted Loomer’s so-called investigative work before it ultimately reached the former president.

The racist claim notably echoes some falsehoods levied against former President Barack Obama who, among the many conspiracy theories about his birth, also faced incorrect allegations that he was ineligible for office because of his Kenyan father. (Right-wing influencers also made similar claims about Vice President Kamala Harris.)

But this is not the only commonality between right-wing media coverage of Obama, Harris, and Haley. During the Obama years, conservative media frequently referred to him by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, in a racist attempt to otherize him for what he called his “funny-sounding name.” Again, similar things happened with Harris. And now, some pro-Trump voices are beginning to deploy a similar playbook against Haley and her birth name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.

Perhaps the most frequent example is Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, who seems to find a certain thrill in using Haley’s first name. “Yeah, that’s right. Her real name is Nimarata,” he once quipped. (Nikki, her middle name, is also her real name.)

Kirk does not exclusively or even mostly use her first name. But for months he has peppered in references to Haley as “Nimarata” while attacking her campaign, warning against her for vice president, or once as an aside while pushing restrictive immigration policy. During an interview with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, he even corrected himself after calling her “Nikki” instead.

American Greatness also had a hand in this trend, with a November debate recap mentioning her squabble with Ramaswamy. The article, which refers to her as Nikki Haley elsewhere, reserves her full name for one brief paragraph that reveals the racist attitudes at the heart of this type of coverage:

Ramaswamy then said something, to which Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley replied, “You’re just scum.” She must be right: after all, Ramaswamy’s the child of people who immigrated from India. Scum indeed!

---

---

1 24 mma

In the years since the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which was spurred by then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to retain power, right-wing media figures have repeatedly whitewashed the violent attack, pushed misinformation and conspiracy theories about it, and defended its participants.

As a result, the initial consensus of the horrors of the day has disappeared, with Republicans reportedly “now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack, and … slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate.”

The following right-wing media personalities have been critical in the push to downplay January 6, and they have continued their apologia for the violent crowd that sought to overturn an election.

no lnx

no grf

Darren Beattie

Beattie was a speechwriter and policy aide for then-President Trump who was fired in 2018 for attending a white nationalist conference two years before. In 2020, he founded right-wing site Revolver News, with Trump himself praising the outlet’s commentary. Beattie has repeatedly pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that the FBI, in connection with an undercover agent named Ray Epps, helped to incite the January 6 riot.

2021: Beattie spread a conspiracy theory that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick’s death was not a result of injuries sustained in the attack, calling his claims “the most important story Revolver has ever run.” Fox’s Tucker Carlson also highlighted the story, calling it an “exhaustive and fascinating new analysis.” [Media Matters, 2/12/21]

2022: Beattie and his news outlet, Revolver News, were crucial in pushing the false claim that Capitol rioter Ray Epps was an undercover FBI agent who duped the crowd into entering the Capitol building. Epps has sued Fox News, and his suit describes Beattie as “the principal person driving the false story that Epps was a federal agent planted as a provocateur to trigger the Capitol violence on January 6th.” [Media Matters, 1/19/22; The New York Times, 7/12/23]

2023-present: Beattie has continued to falsely allege that Epps was a federal agent, claiming he was treated leniently for that reason. In posts on X from September, Beattie claimed that “charging Ray Epps now for ‘disorderly conduct’ is not going to make the Feds' credibility problem go away.” Beattie additionally called the government’s case against Epps “a phony charge” that “will only make things worse for the Fed narrative.” He also suggested that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was a false flag and said that the Justice Department and FBI should “at least do us the courtesy of a high effort cover up like you did with OKC” for January 6. [Media Matters, 9/21/23; Twitter/X, 9/19/23, 9/19/23, 9/19/23, 9/19/23]

DB Tweet Collage

Julie Kelly

Kelly is a prolific conspiracy theorist who has written for a number of conservative outlets, mainly American Greatness, National Review, and The Federalist. Then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Kelly and former Trump adviser John Solomon special access to security camera footage from the Capitol attack, as she claimed that conservatives were being unjustly persecuted.

2021: Kelly called January 6 Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone a “crisis actor.” [Media Matters, 7/27/21]

2022: On One America News, Kelly pushed a conspiracy theory that the FBI fabricated pipe bombs that were discovered at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. the night before the January 6 riot. Kelly also published a book where she claimed that the Biden administration is weaponizing January 6 to persecute conservatives and criminalize political protest. [One America News, Tipping Point with Kara McKinney, 2/16/22; Google Books, accessed 1/5/23, Post Hill Press, accessed 1/5/24]

2023-present: Kelly repeatedly spread the Epps conspiracy theory, and when Epps was charged, she questioned why he wasn’t charged with more crimes, posting, “No obstruction felony? No civil disorder charge? Not even a trespassing on restricted grounds misdemeanor?” Kelly also claimed that the Biden’s Justice Department has “successfully criminalized political speech and activity.” In May, then-Speaker McCarthy reportedly gave Kelly special access to security camera footage from the Capitol attack. [Media Matters, 9/21/23, 5/31/23; The Washington Post, 6/6/23; Premiere Networks, The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, 3/23/23]

Julie Kelly claims that January 6 prosecutions are a silencing free speech and destroying lives

MARCH 23, 2023

Julie Kelly claims that January 6 prosecutions are a silencing free speech and destroying lives

:{Audio

CitationFrom the March 23, 2023, edition of Premiere Networks' The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Tucker Carlson

As a Fox prime-time host, Carlson relentlessly downplayed the January 6 insurrection and promoted the conspiracy theory that Ray Epps, whom he posited was a federal agent or FBI informant, incited the riot. Carlson also repeatedly hosted Beattie and Kelly to push misinformation about the attack.

2021: Carlson put out a revisionist January 6-focused series that suggested the attack was a “false flag.” In an interview with Kelly, Carlson said the left used officer Brian Sicknick’s death “as a political weapon” and that his state funeral was “fake.” “Completely fabricated,” agreed Kelly. Carlson also hosted Beattie and cited an article in which he suggested the January 6 attack may have been orchestrated by FBI operatives. [Media Matters, 11/2/21, 11/4/21, 6/16/21, 6/17/21; Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 11/1/21]

2022: Carlson defended the rioters as “passionately patriotic Americans” “who genuinely love America” and on the one-year anniversary of January 6 he downplayed the violence as “just barely” a riot. As a guest on Carlson’s show, Beattie also called January 6 “a clear hoax” planned and carried out by “the feds.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 6/8/22, 1/6/22, 6/9/22]

Early 2023: Carlson continued to downplay the severity of the January 6 riot, calling the rioters “nonviolent … protesters” and “patriotic Americans.” He also said January 6 was “probably second only to the 2020 election as the biggest scam in my lifetime.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 3/21/23, 3/14/23]

April 2023-present: After Carlson was fired in April from Fox, he appeared on a Spaces live chat on X (formerly Twitter) and continued to downplay the insurrection. [Twitter/X, 12/12/23]

:{Video

CitationFrom a December 12, 2023, X Space

Steve Bannon

Since he left the Trump administration in 2017, Steve Bannon has hosted War Room — a podcast for Real America’s Voice — where he has frequently defended those involved in the insurrection. Bannon has also hosted both Beattie and Kelly to also push conspiracy theories about January 6.

2021: Leading up to the January 6 insurrection, Bannon bragged on his podcast about his role in working to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. [Media Matters, 10/29/21]

2022: Bannon defended the Proud Boys ahead of one of Congress’ January 6 hearings, referring to the organization, whose leaders have since been convicted for their role in the January 6 attack, as a “rag tag beer drinking group.” Bannon also repeatedly made false claims that U.S. Senate sergeant-at-arms Michael Stenger’s death was an intentional homicide, comparing it to older right-wing conspiracy theories around the suicide of Clinton administration official Vince Foster. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 6/9/22; CNN, 9/1/23; Media Matters, 6/29/22]

2023-present: Bannon is still hosting his podcast, War Room, where he has continued to downplay the insurrection, including dismissing Trump's role by stating that Trump was “doing his duty” to “make sure that the 2020 election had been fairly decided” and continuing to insist that the 2020 election was stolen. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 8/2/23]

:{Video

CitationFrom the August 2, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk, who co-founded the right-wing organization Turning Point USA, has repeatedly downplayed the insurrection and accused Ray Epps of being a federal agent.

2021: In the immediate aftermath of January 6, Kirk downplayed the attack, saying that “just because you do something that is regrettable does not mean that you are planning an armed insurrection against the United States government." [Newsweek, 1/12/21]

2022: Kirk pushed the Epps conspiracy theory, posting to X that Epps “texted his nephew ‘I orchestrated it’” and claiming that he is the “only man caught on camera actively calling for people to enter the Capitol and riot.” In another post, Kirk said, “If the FBI knows who Ray Epps is, why haven't they arrested him yet?” [Twitter/X, 1/11/22, 12/30/22]

2023-present: Kirk continues to run Turning Point USA and has repeatedly promoted far-right talking points, including false claims about January 6. On his eponymous show, Kirk has primed his audience to prepare for “another January 6” over Trump’s various indictments and called on a future administration to “get some pardons done” for the January 6 insurrectionists. [Media Matters, 9/22/23, 11/21/23; Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 1/3/24, 12/7/23, 7/28/23, 1/6/23; Twitter/X, 9/19/23]

CHarlie Kirk Epps tweet 1

The Gateway Pundit

The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website that frequently pushes conspiracy theories and hoaxes, and Editor-in-Chief Jim Hoft have repeatedly claimed that the January 6 insurrection was a false flag operation organized by federal law enforcement.

2021: The Gateway Pundit was reportedly a favorite source for Donald Trump in the lead-up to January 6. According to The Washington Post, “In the weeks before he left office in 2021, Trump brandished printouts of Gateway Pundit articles questioning the results of the election.” In May 2021, a few months after the insurrection, Hoft published an article claiming that someone inside the Capitol unlocked the doors for the rioters, citing an anonymous member of the Oath Keepers — a group with several members who have since been convicted for their roles on January 6. [The Washington Post, 1/3/24; The Gateway Pundit, 5/24/21; Politico, 1/23/23]

2022: Hoft doubled down on the claim that “someone inside the security booth at the US Capitol opened the doors” in a Gateway Pundit article titled “WE WERE RIGHT. ” In another article, Hoft claimed that instead of investigating the Oath Keepers’ involvement in January 6, “the FBI would have better luck if they looked at their trained operatives instead who were leading the charge on the Capitol building.” [Twitter/X, 6/13/22; The Gateway Pundit, 1/29/22, 8/24/22]

2023-present: Hoft and The Gateway Pundit remain a source of conspiracy theories about January 6. Hoft has penned several stories alleging that Ray Epps’ criminal charges and sentencing are proof that he was a federal agent and said President Joe Biden “will use the J6 anniversary to accuse Trump supporters of being white supremacists.” [The Gateway Pundit, 1/2/24, 9/19/23, 1/3/24]

Laura Ingraham

Fox News host Laura Ingraham has used her prime-time platform to repeatedly claim that January 6 was a “false flag operation” orchestrated by “antifa” or federal agents.

2021: Ingraham suggested “antifa sympathizers” were behind the January 6 attack, citing a Washington Times article that was later debunked. [The New York Times, 3/1/21]

2022: Ingraham cited Darren Beattie’s Revolver News on her show on Fox to argue that “Epps may have led the breach team that first entered the Capitol on January 6.” [Media Matters, 1/19/22]

2023-present: Ingraham has used her prime-time slot on Fox News to continuously defend Trump and attack those who are involved in the legal cases against him over his alleged role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. She has also whitewashed the Capitol insurrectionists as “old ladies walking through the halls of Congress taking selfies.” [Media Matters, 11/01/23; Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/10/23, 8/7/23, 3/29/23]

:{Video

CitationFrom the March 29, 2023, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Infowars

Prolific conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars co-host Owen Shroyer were part of the crowd on January 6. Shroyer has since celebrated the insurrection while Jones has claimed that any violence that occurred was caused by antifa or federal agents.

2021: Jones responded to the FBI’s investigation into his involvement in the insurrection by claiming that “we know who did it: antifa with some paramilitary groups all together, which are going to turn out to be feds with idiots they provocateured to be part of it, the Q people,” calling it “the modern Reichstag 2.0.” Shroyer stated that “we should have been proud of what happened on January 6.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/14/21, 5/17/21]

2022: Jones claimed that when investigated by the January 6 committee, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment “almost 100 times.” [Texas Tribune, 4/28/22]

2023-present: Jones celebrated Tucker Carlson’s revisionist history of the insurrection, claiming the footage Carlson aired showed that “January 6 was an inside job.” In the days before Shroyer was sentenced to two months in prison for leading a portion of the crowd on January 6, Jones claimed that the government was “asking for prison time for a man that did nothing and was there with me trying to stop people going to the Capitol because he still says he thinks the election was stolen.” [Media Matters, 2/28/23; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 9/6/23; PBS, PBS NewsHour, 9/12/23]

:{Video

CitationFrom the February 20, 2023, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

Newsmax’s Greg Kelly

In the wake of January 6, Newsmax prime-time host Greg Kelly has repeatedly whitewashed the violence at the Capitol on his show, claiming that Trump supporters were allowed into the building or set up by federal law enforcement and unfairly prosecuted.

2021: Kelly claimed that the insurrection was “a trap to make Trump supporters, the MAGA movement, look bad,” and alleged that police were “not doing anything” and had ushered insurrectionists into the Capitol. Kelly later claimed the insurrection was a “false flag operation” staged by federal law enforcement. [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 9/16/21, 11/3/21]

2022: Kelly continued to claim that Capitol Police and other federal agents “stood by” and that insurrectionists were “let in” to the Capitol. He also claimed that the rioters who called for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged were “speaking metaphorically” and downplayed the makeshift gallow that were erected nearby. [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 6/16/22]

2023-present: Kelly doubled down with the claim that January 6 insurrectionists were invited into the Capitol by police, claiming that it is “actually not true” that rioters violently breached the Capitol. He has also repeatedly defended Trump’s increasingly hostile campaign rhetoric, dismissing comparisons of the former president to Adolf Hitler and saying he is “a madman, and that is a good thing.” [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 11/17/23, 11/13/23, 10/19/23]

:{Video

CitationFrom the November 17, 2023, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

---

---

MMA 1 24

A January 3 Washington Post article by Sarah Ellison explores the influence of far-right MAGA site Gateway Pundit and its founder, Jim Hoft, whose false claims Media Matters has documented for years.

Ellison expertly examines Hoft's influence in spreading pernicious voter fraud claims, which others in right-wing media build upon. She even quotes Steve Bannon saying that Hoft and Gateway Pundit provide an “infrastructure” for pro-Trump voices to riff on:

The site’s founder, Jim Hoft, who started blogging as a hobby in 2004, is among “the best at creating a right-wing echo system,” right-wing podcast host and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon said in an interview. Hoft did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this report.

Bannon said Hoft is often one of the first to pick up a social media post or a local news story that other right-wing personalities then repeat and aggregate. He “isn’t afraid to take a leading edge where you don’t have all the facts but they are coming together,” Bannon explained. Once Gateway Pundit puts one of its signature all-caps headlines on a story, that provides what Bannon calls an “infrastructure”[PERMISSION?] upon which his own podcast and other right-wing outlets and influencers can build.

...

In the weeks before he left office in 2021, Trump brandished printouts of Gateway Pundit articles questioning the results of the election, say former aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private White House conversations.

“When he was looking for evidence, Gateway Pundit was one reliable place he knew he could go for validation, and maybe even some new ideas,” said one former aide.

The site has been influential in promoting false election fraud theories even though some of the most influential figures on the right say they don’t trust it. One prominent conservative radio host, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending political allies, said in an interview that the site’s stories are “bull----.”

Gateway Pundit represents a “a fringe segment of so-called conservative media that’s driven by conspiratorial clickbait to drive revenues to stay afloat,” the host said.

A former Trump administration official who denies that Joe Biden rightfully won the 2020 election nevertheless told The Post in an interview that if you cite Gateway Pundit in an argument, “it means you’ve lost. You can’t use it to make an argument. You can only use it to hear what you want to hear.”

The entire piece is worth reading, specifically to learn how Gateway Pundit has amplified false and misleading claims about voter fraud in Michigan.

With the 2024 election on the horizon, it's worth remembering that the earliest, most viral false claims to arise may well be sourced – directly or indirectly – to Gateway Pundit.

REF WAPO

WAPO NO LNX

Democracy in America

Election 2024

Democracy in America

A right-wing tale of Michigan election fraud had it all – except proof

Gateway Pundit, a favorite news source of former president Donald Trump’s, has pushed false claims of a stolen election even as others have pulled back in the face of consequences

By Sarah Ellison

January 3, 2024

The story had all the elements of a blockbuster crime saga: burner phones, semiautomatic weapons, silencers and bags of prepaid cash cards. “NOW WE HAVE PROOF!” blared the headline on the right-wing website Gateway Pundit. “Massive 2020 Voter Fraud Uncovered in Michigan.”

The story referenced “thousands of fraudulent ballots” caught by Muskegon City Clerk Ann Meisch. Grateful readers deluged her office with hundreds of calls, hailing her as a hero.

But Meisch knew it wasn’t true.

According to police reports, the Michigan attorney general’s office and an interview with Meisch, an employee of a voter registration drive company had submitted to the Muskegon city clerk thousands of voter registration applications weeks before the 2020 election, some with faked signatures and faulty addresses.

Meisch’s staff spent hundreds of hours weeding out the bad applications. The guns the police found were legally registered to a landlord who had nothing to do with the registration drive. The prepaid phones and cash cards were given to temporary employees to contact new voter prospects.

“There were no fraudulent ballots,” Meisch said in an interview, “not a single one that anyone in my office was aware of.”

But for Gateway Pundit, which is run out of its founder’s home and whose small staff produces stories that help set the agenda for Donald Trump’s most ardent followers, the August story provided weeks of headlines that radiated across right-wing media and were repeatedly amplified by pro-Trump influencers. That’s despite the fact that it was published nearly three years after the election — and after Meisch’s staff had thwarted any fraud.

The outlet’s emphasis on long-debunked fraud claims helps explain why election denial has proved so durable, despite the many efforts to halt the spread of disinformation and impose consequences on those who persist in it.

Trump himself faces multiple criminal counts for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election on the disproven grounds that it had been rigged against him. The Trump lawyers who pushed false voter fraud claims have, in some cases, been hit with criminal charges, as well as censure and disbarment proceedings. In mid-December, a federal jury ordered former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to pay $148 million to two election workers who sued him for defamation. Trump’s largest media ally, Fox News, agreed last year to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation suit.

Some right-wing outlets, such as Fox’s smaller cable-news rival Newsmax, have pulled back from election-related conspiracy theories in the face of lawsuits and threats of legal consequences.

But through it all, Gateway Pundit has continued trumpeting disproven election fraud stories, even as it faces defamation suits over its coverage of the 2020 election. It has also taken its own legal action against fact-checkers, disinformation researchers and story subjects, while pressing in court to make it harder for social media companies to crack down on misinformation.

The outlet’s reporting was a favorite of Trump’s as he clung to the presidency more than three years ago, aides said, and it has become a key amplifier of his continued fraud claims as he campaigns to return to the White House. Gateway Pundit traffic peaked in November 2020 at nearly 7 million page views, and the site still averages more than a million visits each month, according to Comscore, which measures the readership of media sites.

Less than a year from the 2024 election, the latest polls show that some two-thirds of Republicans falsely believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Gateway Pundit’s influence helps explain why, experts in disinformation say. Though the site employs only a handful of regular writers, it has played an outsize role in popularizing false claims.

“Gateway Pundit is a known source of disinformation that quickly trades up the chain,” said Joan Donovan, an assistant professor at Boston University studying online disinformation and media manipulation. “Because when they report a piece of information, it gives others license to do so.”why?

The site’s founder, Jim Hoft, who started blogging as a hobby in 2004, is among “the best at creating a right-wing echo system,” right-wing podcast host and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon said in an interview. Hoft did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this report.

Bannon said Hoft is often one of the first to pick up a social media post or a local news story that other right-wing personalities then repeat and aggregate. He “isn’t afraid to take a leading edge where you don’t have all the facts but they are coming together,” Bannon explained. Once Gateway Pundit puts one of its signature all-caps headlines on a story, that provides what Bannon calls an “infrastructure” upon which his own podcast and other right-wing outlets and influencers can build.

That infrastructure was useful to pro-Trump One America News, a small cable network that pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. A former OAN producer attested that he and his colleagues were directed to consult Gateway Pundit when they arrived at work to inform the day’s programming, according to depositions and documents from a defamation lawsuit filed against the Trump campaign and others, including Gateway Pundit, by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive who was falsely accused by Trump allies of helping to swing the 2020 election.

“Check Gateway Pundit, Epoch Times and The Blaze right when you get in. … These are very helpful to find good OAN content,” read one Jan. 14, 2021, email to producers from the channel’s news director. OAN settled in the case under undisclosed terms in September.

“Gateway Pundit’s articles were chopped-up sentences that were drawn from whatever crazy thing a Twitter user was saying about election denial,” the former producer, Marty Golingan, said in an interview, “and they would spin it with maximum outrage and reactionary emotion.”

In the weeks before he left office in 2021, Trump brandished printouts of Gateway Pundit articles questioning the results of the election, say former aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private White House conversations.

“When he was looking for evidence, Gateway Pundit was one reliable place he knew he could go for validation, and maybe even some new ideas,” said one former aide.

The site has been influential in promoting false election fraud theories even though some of the most influential figures on the right say they don’t trust it. One prominent conservative radio host, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending political allies, said in an interview that the site’s stories are “bull----.”

Gateway Pundit represents a “fringe segment of so-called conservative media that’s driven by conspiratorial clickbait to drive revenues to stay afloat,” the host said.

A former Trump administration official who denies that Joe Biden rightfully won the 2020 election nevertheless told The Post in an interview that if you cite Gateway Pundit in an argument, “it means you’ve lost. You can’t use it to make an argument. You can only use it to hear what you want to hear.”

Gateway’s origins

In the nearly two decades since its founding, Hoft’s website has spread debunked conspiracy theories on a wide range of topics — for instance, casting doubt on President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and suggesting that student survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Fla., school shooting were part of an anti-Trump plot.

More recently, Gateway Pundit has helped spread misinformation about the attack on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was bludgeoned in the couple’s San Francisco home last year by an intruder intent on kidnapping his wife. It has also falsely claimed that U.S. aid money for Ukraine is being laundered and going into the pockets of Democrats.}:

But the site’s most notable focus in recent years has been promoting disproven narratives about election fraud.

Hoft created Gateway Pundit in 2004, inspired by the role that bloggers played in debunking a “60 Minutes” segment on George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard, according to former associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private conversations. Bloggers had been the first to point out that “60 Minutes” had unwittingly relied on falsified records in telling its story; CBS ultimately retracted the piece.

Hoft, 60, rarely grants interviews. But years ago, the Iowa native described in a message posted online ahead of a high school reunion how he started the site.

“So much has happened since I left Fort Dodge,” Hoft began his note to his former classmates at a Catholic school, explaining that “something exciting happened in late 2004. I started writing a little political blog” that, after a few years, “gained thousands of readers every day.”

The work started getting him invited on “paid trips to different conservative events around the world,” Hoft wrote, including a 2007 visit to Israel sponsored by a conservative political group. There he met Andrew Breitbart, who at the time was an editor at the Drudge Report. The two became friends and developed an appreciation for the power of the internet to take a small ember of a story and turn it into a conflagration.

“Jim is a direct descendant of Andrew Breitbart,” Bannon said, referencing the founder of the right-wing media site Breitbart News. “Remember, they’re both about citizen journalism, and Jim knows how to harness the energy of regular citizens.”

Trump’s candidacy was a boon for Hoft and for Gateway Pundit, which, according to a study conducted by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, became one of the most popular sites on the right in 2015-2016. Among those sites, the study found, “Gateway Pundit is in a class of its own, known for ‘publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes.’”

In 2020, Gateway Pundit became a key part of what researchers at the University of Washington and Stanford University among others deemed a “disinformation campaign” produced by “hyperpartisan media and political operatives” working “alongside ordinary people to produce and amplify misleading claims.”

Instead of operating from the top down, this kind of campaign seizes on the social media posts of “concerned citizens” and turns them into shareable pieces of content that can spread to different outlets and to powerful influencers, the researchers found.

In one illustrative example given in the study, Gateway Pundit helped circulate a photo posted on Twitter by a writer for conservative outlet the Blaze in September 2020. The photo purported to show 1,000 mail-in ballots found in a dumpster in Sonoma County, Calif.

“Big if true,” read the caption. Five hours later, Gateway Pundit weighed in with this headline: “EXCLUSIVE: California Man Finds THOUSANDS of Unopened Ballots in Garbage Dumpster — Workers Quickly Try to Cover Them Up.”

The county responded in a Facebook post: “This is not true.” Instead, the county said, the photo depicted old ballot envelopes from the November 2018 election that had been discarded in accordance with California law.

Gateway Pundit updated its story after the post: “The County of Sonoma put out a statement saying the ballots were from 2018. The county says the ballots were already opened. You can judge for yourself.”

In May, Hoft, alongside a co-director of a coronavirus vaccine skeptics group, sued the researchers, alleging that the entities colluded to “censor” speech by sharing their research with social media platforms as part of an attempted crackdown on misinformation. A representative for Stanford said the case, which is in its early stages, is “completely without merit.” A representative for the University of Washington declined to speak about ongoing litigation.

Election workers under threat

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Gateway Pundit enjoyed a social-media-fueled traffic spike similar to the one it had during the 2016 election. A German Marshall Fund analysis found that “verified account shares of its content” on Twitter increased ninefold from the first quarter of 2018 through the fourth quarter of 2020, reaching 7.2 million shares, more than for The Washington Post, NBC News or NPR. Nine of its 10 most-shared articles “included disinformation about voter fraud,” the analysis found.

One of Gateway Pundit’s highest-profile stories of 2020 was published after a volunteer Trump campaign attorney presented a misleading video during a post-election hearing in Georgia. The video purported to show that Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, her daughter, had tampered with ballots.

That day, Gateway Pundit published the first of 58 articles on the two women that would appear over the next year and a half, despite the fact that Georgia election officials had quickly debunked claims that the pair had engaged in election fraud. Gateway Pundit’s stories cast Freeman and Moss as “crooked” operatives who counted “illegal ballots from a suitcase stashed under a table!”

In 2021, the women sued Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft and Hoft’s twin brother, Joe, who is a frequent contributor to the site. Gateway Pundit and Jim and Joe Hoft filed a counterclaim, alleging that the case against them is designed to drive Gateway Pundit out of business. The counterclaim was dismissed in 2023.

The lawsuit by Freeman and Moss, which is awaiting trial, alleges that the falsehoods about them “have not only devastated their personal and professional reputations but instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety.”

In their response, the Hofts said articles in Gateway Pundit about Freeman and Moss were “either statements of opinion based on disclosed facts or statements of rhetorical hyperbole that no reasonable reader is likely to interpret as a literal statement of fact.”

A federal jury recently ordered that Giuliani pay the two women $148 million for his own false claims that they helped steal the election from Trump. His lawyer, Joseph D. Sibley IV, told jurors that Gateway Pundit had been “patient zero” for the false claims.

Not a smoking gun

Meisch, the Muskegon city clerk, fears she may come under the same kind of attack when people learn that she doesn’t believe she uncovered massive voter fraud in her city.

“I’m just worried people will turn on me,” she said.

Gateway Pundit’s Aug. 8 story about Muskegon, a formerly booming foundry town on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan that Trump narrowly lost in 2016 and 2020, outlined a purported voter fraud conspiracy. The report was built on a police investigation that had been reported on three years earlier by local news outlets. The police had found no evidence of a broader effort to subvert the election, but referred the case to the FBI because the voter registration company at the center of the case was based out of state. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment.

Gateway Pundit published a copy of the 2020 police report, which contained new details about the investigation, including that police had found guns in the storefront that the voter registration company had rented. Almost immediately after publication, other right-wing outlets picked up and amplified the piece. The same day the story was published, Bannon hosted Hoft on his daily podcast to discuss it. Over the next two days, then-Fox News host Lou Dobbs, conservative podcaster Joe Oltmann and Right Side Broadcasting, a pro-Trump streaming service, cited the story.

Dobbs called it a guide to “how the Marxist Dems stole Michigan.” Oltmann said the gun silencers, also known as suppressors, were evidence “of organized crime.” Bannon said the story showed that “demon” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, was a “liar.”

For the next 10 days, Gateway Pundit averaged a story a day on the topic, eventually publishing at least 40 pieces. During that period, an array of right-wing podcasters all discussed the story on their shows, including former Fox personality Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec, a far-right blogger.

Twelve days after the initial story was published, the Michigan attorney general’s office issued a statement responding to the report, citing its “false claims of election law violations.”

“Despite Gateway Pundit’s continuing claims to the contrary, the 2020 election has been thoroughly litigated and audited and has been proven well beyond a reasonable doubt that it was fair and accurate,” the statement read.

The voter-registration company employee who had handed in the faked registration applications to the clerk’s office had not filled them out herself; she was responsible for collecting the registration forms from many employees and submitting them in batches, according to Nessel’s office. Voters registration in Michigan are nonpartisan.

The state attorney general’s office said that while it had not ruled out that a crime may have been committed in Muskegon, numerous state agencies had investigated and none had uncovered evidence of successful fraudulent registrations because they had all been “intercepted and not filed into the state’s voter database.”

“This is once again, not a smoking gun for their long-debunked theories,” the statement read.

But Gateway Pundit was unbowed. The same day, the site published another piece on Muskegon and Hoft appeared on Bannon’s podcast again, calling Nessel’s statement “confirmation” of the Gateway Pundit story.

On Sept. 5, Trump posted about the story on Truth Social, without comment, and was reposted 3,300 times.

In late August, the Michigan Republican Party held a news conference in Lansing, the state capital, that party Chairwoman Kristina Karamo billed as an opportunity to “address the recent reports of election corruption uncovered in Michigan.”

“The constant questions surrounding our election system is an absolute threat to our republic,” Karamo said. “No one is going to continue to convince us that these are all just a bunch of anomalies.”

Gateway Pundit “slanted the story to make it seem that the attempt to interfere with the election was successful,” Karen Buie, the Muskegon County clerk, said in an interview. “There was an attempt. You can’t negate that. But it failed because we have systems in place.”

Meisch, the city clerk, said in an interview that she is bracing for even more mistrust of the system that she has worked for over 30 years to protect. Already, she said, paranoia among voters has been growing as baseless conspiracy theories spread about voting machines and drop boxes.

“We haven’t yet seen the full impact of the Gateway Pundit story,” said Meisch. “We won’t see that until the next [presidential] election.”

But for Gateway Pundit, the impact is already apparent. In July, the month before the Muskegon story, the site’s traffic fell below 700,000 unique visitors for the first time in years, according to Comscore.

In August, it more than doubled, to 1.5 million.

Clara Ence Morse and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

---

AHA DOH CONSPIR AS SMEAR ~ TARGET = DIRTY TRICK BUT REQ ALT FACT EARTH 2 MURDOCH FUCKERY

AN 12 23

When special counsel Jack Smith announced 37 federal criminal charges against former President Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case in June, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) warned that he would be "the subject of relentless attacks" and could expect "death threats."

Schiff definitely called it.

Smith has been inundated with death threats not only because of that case, but also, in response to his election interference case against the former president. Trump and his loyalists have repeatedly used words like "deranged" to attack Smith, who has become a major target of MAGA conspiracy theorists.

In an article published by Mother Jones on December 13, journalists David Corn and Dan Friedman describe an anti-Smith conspiracy theory that is showing up on far-right websites.

"A new conspiracy theory rising on the right is being deployed to help Donald Trump," Corn and Freidman explain. "It claims that Jack Smith, the special counsel who is prosecuting Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and for his alleged swiping of classified documents, was part of a multimillion- dollar extortion scheme when he was the chief prosecutor investigating and prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo. In the past two weeks, this unsubstantiated narrative has started popping up on fringe right-wing sites and social media posts."

The reporters continue, "Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and QAnonish MAGA champion, has promoted this tale…. This campaign against Smith is based on documents circulated by John Moynihan, a onetime DEA employee who says he handled money laundering investigations for the agency."

According to Corn and Freidman, MAGA Republican and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne "has claimed credit for helping to launch Moynihan's allegations against Smith."

READ MORE:Fani Willis speaks out about racist death threats and 'bold-faced lie' following Trump indictment

The journalists note, "Byrne tweeted a link to a story on the Moynihan charges that appeared on Gateway Pundit, a fringe-right site, and he declared, 'I DID THAT. Well, the extraordinary federal John Moynihan and I.' He added laughing emojis. A website he created called Deep Capture was among the first to post the Moynihan complaint."

---

---

mma11 23

Newsmax is not known for shying away from support of “one of the greatest presidents this country has ever had,” as one host described alleged felon Donald J. Trump. That support includes the network’s coverage of Trump’s civil trial for fraud in New York, which has featured compliments for a Trump son's hair, a semi-regular soapbox for a Trump family member, and vicious attacks against Judge Arthur Engoron and his family over unverified photos and memes.

Like much of its pro-Trump coverage, Newsmax’s increasingly scummy, personal lines of attack seem geared to turn yet another thing that in theory should be a negative for Trump in the primary — this time, decades of alleged fraud — into a positive. To that end, the network has employed a familiar and false refrain, asserting that investors were not just paid but “overpaid, since the assets were inflated,” so “there were no victims,” just the perennial “witch hunt.” But, Newsmax warns, hinting at revenge, “the last laugh will be on all of them” once Trump returns to office.

On November 9, guest host Lidia Curanaj began The Chris Salcedo Show by celebrating that Trump “has truly damaged people on the left by proving all of his critics wrong, by being one of the greatest presidents this country has ever had.”

Citing a social media post featuring anti-Trump memes as an example of these “damaged” people, Curanaj scandalously reported that “the author of this tweet [is] reportedly the wife of Judge Engoron. Yes! The same Democrat activist judge that is now trying to dismantle President Trump’s substantial financial empire,” before going on to note that she has “refuted that it’s her X account.”

Video

CitationFrom the November 9, 2023, edition of Newsmax's The Chris Salcedo Show

She also attacked Engoron himself, calling him, “someone whose discernment is questionable, to say the least.”

“This guy is just so smug,” Curanaj complained, referencing a video of Engoron, “the way he smiles there, mugging for the cameras as if he’s the star of some kind of 90s sitcom.”

Then, after apologizing “if you just had some lunch or dinner,” Curanaj brought up the rumor that Judge Engoron “posted two nude torso photos of himself” online, commenting “thank god that camera was blocking the lower area.”

The unsubstantiated claim comes from a Gateway Pundit post that was soon shared by Trump on Truth Social; the photos are purportedly workout progress photos someone posted to Engoron’s high school alumni newsletter online, but it has not been confirmed that it’s him in the pictures.

With a “censored” bar covering the male figure’s nipples, Curanaj attempted to shame Engoron: “If there was a shirtless photo of me I would lose my job, right? Because Newsmax would say, ‘What kind of judgment does Lidia have to do something like that?’ And he just recently did it. This is not something he did many years ago.”

After also ripping into New York Attorney General Letitia James, Curanaj groused that “the last laugh will be on all of them when President Trump becomes the president of the United States again.”

Video

CitationFrom the November 9, 2023, edition of Newsmax's The Chris Salcedo Show

The network's over-the-top coverage of the civil fraud trial has been on display for weeks. On November 1, prime-time host Rob Schmitt read a brief report about Donald Trump Jr’s testimony, pausing to note that his “hair looks good” in the low-angle shot Newsmax used. When the picture changed to Judge Engoron, he quipped “that one, not so much,” before denouncing “one of the stupidest cases New York has ever brought, and believe me this state has brought some stupid cases,” noting that other New York real estate developers called it “outrageous.”

The entire time, the report shared half a screen with an advertisement for gold-backed IRA retirement accounts, telling viewers to text the promotional code “NEWSMAX” to a six-digit phone number.

“So that tells you a lot,” Schmitt said of the developers’ criticism.

Video

CitationFrom the November 1, 2023, edition of Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight

Newsmax has also continued to platform Trump’s daughter-in-law, and co-defendant Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump. Though Trump’s appearances and guest hosting spots are often dedicated to attacking President Joe Biden and pushing corruption allegations against his family, she also occasionally discusses her own family’s fraud trial.

“My husband and my brother-in-law were both in a New York courtroom today,” Trump complained while guest hosting Rob Schmitt Tonight on November 2. Parroting a real estate lawyer quoted by the New York Post, Trump insisted: “There were no victims. No one lost money. No one got hurt. Everyone got paid in full — even overpaid since the assets were inflated.”

“For this detestable woman,” Trump said of James, “it’s not about the law. It’s all about getting Trump.”

Video

CitationFrom the November 2, 2023, edition of Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight

“This witch hunt isn’t just unethical,” Trump warned, “this honestly could have ripple effects across other multi-billion dollar industries.” Her guest, right-wing attorney Jordan Sekulow, agreed, suggesting there was a deeper level of betrayal in the fact that the lawsuit came in New York, “after everything the Trump family has done for the city of New York.”

---

---

Ad Free / Commenting Login

Email

Enter Email

Password

Enter Password

SUPPORT AMERICAN THINKER

Now more than ever, the ability to speak our minds is crucial to the republic we cherish. If what you see on American Thinker resonates with you, please consider supporting our work with a donation of as much or as little as you can give. Every dollar contributed helps us pay our staff and keep our ideas heard and our voices strong.

sponsored content

From the WebPowered by ZergNet

We Now Know Who Was Behind The Tom & Gisele Divorce

This Is What All Of Miley Cyrus' Exes Have Said About Her

Gutfeld's Brutal Comments About The View Sparks A Bitter Feud

Viral Animation Of The Titan Sub's Demise Has Everyone Stunned

Fans Are Still Talking About Bieber's Tasteless Bucket Incident

Biden's Awkward Move Causes A Spectacle At The White House

sponsored content

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com

FOLLOW US ON

American Thinker on Facebook American Thinker on Twitter American Thinker on MeWe American Thinker on GETTRAmerican Thinker Newsletter Signup

Recent Articles

DOJ’s Dirty Deeds

In the Name of Climate Change: Travel Restrictions and the Great Reset

What’s Happening In Ukraine Is America’s War

July 30, 2023

What’s Happening In Ukraine Is America’s War

By Igor Mel’čuk

Many who oppose the war in Ukraine don’t understand that America has a vital stake in the outcome: Putin’s Russia is the ideological and practical descendent of the worst of the Soviet Union and is, therefore, very dangerous. To see that, one must understand the balance of power after WWII; what was happening within the USSR before, during, and after WWII; what happened when the USSR ended; and what Putin’s Russia is today....

The True Definition of Socialism

Why President Trump Should Declare a Day for America to Pray and Fast

Liberalism Is a False Gospeland a Counterfeit Religion

Standing with Ukraine...or with Biden's Militarism?

The Risk That Americans Are Too Busy To Notice Our Dying Liberties

Economics Belongs Within Geopolitics

The Court Of Public Opinion Is A Bulwark Against Lawfare

Blog Posts

Senate Democrats quash bid to create audit office for Ukraine aid

What NASA and the European Space Agency are admitting but the media are failing to report about our current heat wave

Do the big medical orgs hate Asian Americans?

Transgender researchers suffer from ‘traumatic harm’ when STEM students mock survey questions in their answers

Watergate vs. Bidengate

Stop donating to your university

Congresspeople are wrong to blame health woes amongst blacks on race

Carl Sagan predicted from the grave the rise of people like Fauci (video)

How about an honest headline and article fromMSNBCfor a change?

The dangers of a post-science society

RFK Jr. is not an antisemite, just a politician

Disney should release Kamala Roe and her 7 friends

Illinois's pro-abortion governor signs law to silence crisis pregnancy centers -- with $50,000 fines

Unless we act fast, Canada’s transgender and euthanasia nightmare is our future

So what happened to Obama’s chef?

Monthly Archives

July 2023

June 2023

May 2023

April 2023

March 2023

February 2023

January 2023

December 2022

November 2022

October 2022

September 2022

August 2022

July 2022

More...

Trending News ,p cut but celebs chapelle tour

ujkr horror

gateway p retweet from sky

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07/ukraine-front-line-is-horror-genocide-slaughter-says/

Ukraine Front Line is “Horror. Genocide. Slaughter”, Says Irish “Rambo” Who Is Leaving after 17 Months

By Richard Abelson Jul. 17, 2023 8:45 am1288 Comments

Truth Gettr Gab TelegramShare Tweet

Sky News international correspondent John Sparks spoke to an Irish volunteer, Rhys Byrne, who has been fighting on the frontline in the east of Ukraine for 17 months and is now leaving Ukraine “due to witnessing atrocities,” Sparks reports. Byrne called the fighting he witnessed “horrific.”

“On ‘Zero Line’ it’s horror. It’s horror. There is just a genocide. It’s slaughter”, says Rhys Byrne, codename ‘Rambo’, a 28-year-old from Dublin. Byrne fought for the 59th brigade in the Ukrainian territorial army, where he operated a heavy machine gun, Sparks reports.

“There are dead people everywhere. Russians dead. Ukrainian people dead…. the biggest problem we get when we’re going into trenches is stepping over all the dead bodies that are already there from the last people [who] went in – that kind of stuff really haunts you.”

“Biggest Bed Sheet Sale Ever” At MyPillow— Giza Dreams Sheets At Low, Low Prices

Byrne and a fellow volunteer had decided to leave Ukraine after experiencing “the final straw” that nearly got him killed: an encounter with a Russian tank.

1 Simple Trick To Cut Your Electrical Bill

How To Lose 40.5 Lbs In A Month (Eat This Once Every Day)

These 2 Vegetables Will Kill Your Belly And Arm Fat Overnight]

“We were told there was a Russian trench line and our job is to go into the trenches and clear them out and hold them until the auxiliary units come and then we go back.” Byrne said his unit, consisting of 40 Ukrainians, Americans and Britons, were taken to an area near the front or ‘Zero Line’ with no air cover or drones. A pair of Ukrainian tanks withdrew, leaving them with no support.

When they saw another tank approaching, they assumed it was friendly – but it was a Russian tank, which opened fire on their position. “Those who survived took cover in the woods,” Sparks reports.  The dramatic footage recorded of the Irishman’s body camera documents the incident.

The volunteers were rescued by a Ukranian Humvee pick-up under fire as the enemy tank began to chase them.  “Now we have the tank literally coming out, starting to chase us. And that’s terrifying when you see a big T-72 coming for you and you’re in a Humvee pick-up.  Yeah, it’s like a hot knife through butter. You’re finished. So, again, all of us are screaming, drive the Humvee, drive the Humvee. I was going mental.”

3 Toxic Foods for Dogs: The One Meat You Should Never Feed Your Dog

DogFoodDiscovery.com

MD: If You Have Dark Spots, Do This Immediately (It's Genius!)

GundryMD

The 1 Household Item That Visibly Tightens Saggy Skin

Beverly Hills MD]

Byrne saw a Russian shell sail over their heads.  “We are not supposed to be alive. I mean, we were closer than close to death, it was closer than close… it was really f***** up.”

Sparks spoke to Byrne at a shelter for international volunteers run by New Zealander Pastor Owen Panoma, who called the shelter “a source of some sort of support, you know, to sit there, where are you from? You got kids? You know, basically to take their mind off the war.”

Many of the volunteers are haunted by what they have been through, Panoma says:  “They sleep talk. They scream. At night-time you come out to go to the toilet, ‘you guys alright?’ and the guys wake up. You know, they don’t realize what they’re doing. They may not be aware of what they’re actually doing because it’s quiet here, out there it’s not.”

LINK TO VID: BT aa dude

Ukrainian Units Decimated’ – Why the US Still won't let Ukr negotiate

MD: If You Have Dark Spots, Do This Immediately (It's Genius!)

GundryMD

Heart Surgeon Begs Americans: "Stop Doing This To Your Fruit"

Gundry.MD

Top Heart Surgeon: This Simple Trick Helps Empty Your Bowels Every Morning

Guthealthwellness

Top Doctor: If You Eat Oatmeal Every Day, This Is What Happens

GundryMD

1 Simple Trick To Cut Your Electrical Bill

How To Lose 40.5 Lbs In A Month (Eat This Once Every Day)

These 2 Vegetables Will Kill Your Belly And Arm Fat Overnight

---

sponsored content

FROM THE WEBby ZergNet

A Witness Recounts The Horrifying Scene Of Chef Tafari's Death

General Mark Milley's Scathing Resignation Letter Stuns Everyone

Jill Biden's Ex-Husband Makes A Stunning Claim About The Bidens

Wrestling Legend Hulk Hogan Spills Exciting Relationship Update

Hollywood Weeps For The Death Of An Award-Winning Acting Legend

Woman Gored By Yellowstone Bison Gets Big Surprise In Hospital

---

an 7 23

no lnx

Home | 'Give it a (expletive) rest': AZ governor hits back after far-right outlet hounds her at gym

Gideon Rubin

and Raw Story

July 08, 2023

Katie Hobbs hit back after a reporter from a far-right outlet hounded the Arizona governor at her gym, video posted on social media shows.

:{:{}:

}:

The Gateway Pundit reporter is heard shouting questions based on baseless conspiracies about her 2022 election victory over Kari Lake at the governor as she is seen walking swiftly down a hallway.

:{:{}:

}:

The reporter, who identifies himself as Jordan Conradson, hounds Hobbs as she walks through hallways at the gym accompanied by security.

“I have some questions about the election in Arizona,” he’s heard in the video asking Hobbs.

Conradson asks Hobbs to respond to unsubstantiated allegations that Maricopa County improperly conducted “secret” tests on voting equipment.

He later asks her to respond to the suggestion that mail-in votes were cast improperly.

An annoyed Hobbs at the end of the video tells him:

“Give it a (expletive) rest, Jordan. I’m at the gym.”

Gateway Pundit describes the meeting between Hobbs and Conradson as a chance encounter and calls the governor a “potty mouth.”

Watch the video below or click the link.

From Your Site Articles

'I'll burn Arizona to the ground': SNL roasts election-denier Kari Lake ›

'Must vote to decertify': Kari Lake ally erupts after Katie Hobbs sworn in as Arizona governor ›

Kari Lake mocked relentlessly for whining on Twitter after Katie Hobbs defeat ›

Related Articles Around the Web

Katie Hobbs outsmarted Kari Lake, again, with private swearing-in ›

Katie Hobbs On Why Kari Lake Lost – Rolling Stone ›

Hobbs beats Lake in Arizona governor's race - POLITICO ›

---

---

ref nyt

bing steal nno lnx

G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election

A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.

By Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel

June 19, 2023

On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.

The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money,according to several people involved.

They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise— and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

“I think it’s quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director ofColumbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute,an organization that works to safeguard freedom of speech and the press.

:{:{}:

}:

The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public. It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough.

A conservative advocacy group led by Stephen Miller, the former adviser to Mr. Trump, filed a class-action lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Louisiana that echoes many of the committee’s accusations and focuses on some of the same defendants.

:{:{}:

}:

Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.

In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful.

A House subcommittee was created to scrutinize what Republicans have charged is a government effort to silence conservatives. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

The committee’s chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Mr. Trump, has accused the organizations of “censorship of disfavored speech” involving issues that have galvanized the Republican Party: the policies around the Covid-19 pandemic and the integrity of the American political system, including the outcome of the 2020 election.

Much of the disinformation surrounding both issues has come from the right. Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices.

[The Spread of Misinformation and Falsehoods

The Titanic Truthers of TikTok: On the app, long-established facts about the 1912 disaster are being newly litigated as musty rumors merge with fresh misinformation and manipulated content.

A Global Effort: A group of scholars introduced an international panel to study online misinformation, inspired by the way scientists documented the global effect of carbon emissions.

A Hub for Conspiracy Theories: The Denver airport is a magnet for tall tales inspired by the paranormal — and an experiment into whether, sometimes, institutional fabulism can just be fun.

Climate Lies: In 2021, Google said that it would stop running ads alongside content that denied climate change. But a report shows that one of its platforms, YouTube, has continued to profit from videos pushing misinformation on the topic.]

Those complaints have been fueled by Twitter’s decision under its new owner, Elon Musk, to release selected internal communications between government officials and Twitter employees. The communications show government officials urging Twitter to take action against accounts spreading disinformation but stopping short of ordering them to do, as some critics claimed.

Patrick L. Warren, an associate professor at Clemson University, said researchers at the school have provided documents to the committee, and given some staff members a short presentation. “I think most of this has been spurred by our appearance in the Twitter files, which left people with a pretty distorted sense of our mission and work,” he said.

Last year, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, arguing that government officials effectively cajoled or coerced Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms by threatening legislative changes.The judge, Terry A. Doughty, rejected a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March.

The current campaign’s focus is not government officials but rather private individuals working for universities or nongovernmental organizations. They have their own First Amendment guarantees of free speech, including their interactions with the social media companies.

The group behind the class action, America First Legal, named as defendants two researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta; a professor at the University of Washington, Kate Starbird; an executive of Graphika, Camille François; and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graham Brookie.

If the lawsuit proceeds, they could face trial and, potentially, civil damages if the accusations are upheld.

Mr. Miller, the president of America First Legal, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last month, he said the lawsuit was “striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex.”

The researchers, who have been asked by the House committee to submit emails and other records, are also defendants in the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The plaintiffs include Jill Hines, a director of Health Freedom Louisiana, an organization that has been accused of disinformation, and Jim Hoft, the founder of the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site. The court in the Western District of Louisiana has, under Judge Doughty, become a favored venue for legal challenges against the Biden administration.

The attacks use “the same argument that starts with some false premises,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, which is not a party to any of the legal action. “We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do.”

The House Judiciary Committee has focused much of its questioning on two collaborative projects. One was the Election Integrity Partnership, which Stanford and the University of Washington formed before the 2020 electionto identify attempts “to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The other, also organized by Stanford, was called the Virality Project and focused on the spread of disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.

Both subjects have become political lightning rods, exposing the researchers to partisan attacks online that have become ominously personal at times.

In the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the requests for information — including all emails — have even extended to students who volunteered to work as interns for the Election Integrity Partnership.

A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.

No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.

“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Mr. Hancock said.

The universities and research organizations have sought to comply with the committee’s requests, though the collection of years of emails has been a time-consuming task complicated by issues of privacy. They face mounting legal costs and questions from directors and donors about the risks raised by studying disinformation. Online attacks have also taken a toll on morale and, in some cases, scared away students.

In May, Mr. Jordan, the committee’s chairman, threatened Stanford with unspecified legal action for not complying with a previously issued subpoena, even though the university’s lawyers have been negotiating with the committee’s lawyers over how to shield students’ privacy. (Several of the students who volunteered are identified in the America First Legal lawsuit.)

The committee declined to discuss details of the investigation, including how many requests or subpoenas it has filed in total. Nor has it disclosed how it expects the inquiry to unfold — whether it would prepare a final report or make criminal referrals and, if so, when. In its statements, though, it appears to have already reached a broad conclusion.

“The Twitter files and information from private litigation show how the federal government worked with social media companies and other entities to silence disfavored speech online,” a spokesman, Russell Dye, said in a statement. “The committee is working hard to get to the bottom of this censorship to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans.”

The partisan controversy is having an effect on not only the researchers but also the social media giants.

:{:{}:

}:

Twitter, under Mr. Musk, has made a point of lifting restrictions and restoring accounts that had been suspended, including theGateway Pundit’s. YouTube recently announced that it would no longer ban videos that advanced “false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections.”

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation for The Times. He has worked in Washington, Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing, where he contributed to the articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2021. He is also the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.” @stevenleemyers • Facebook

Sheera Frenkel is a prize-winning technology reporter based in San Francisco. In 2021, she and Cecilia Kang published “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination.” @sheeraf

---

---

mma 6 23

conservative media outlets and figures have ramped up their attacks on special counsel Jack Smith, who is in charge of two criminal investigations of former President Donald Trump, following news reports on increasing evidence of Trump’s alleged crimes. Many of these conservatives are accusing Smith of “leaking” evidence to the press, and a former Trump appointee with a seemingly personal grudge against Smith repeatedly claimed without evidence that the special counsel hates Trump and is politically biased in his investigations.

Smith is investigating Trump for withholding classified documents from the federal government and for his attempt to illegally remain in power following his electoral defeat in the 2020 presidential election. News reports about developments in these two investigations have spurred most of the recent right-wing attacks on Smith.

On May 31, CNN reported that “federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran,” adding that the recording undercuts “his argument that he declassified everything” that was seized from his Mar-a-Lago property last year. And on May 25, The Washington Post reported that Trump staffers moved boxes of documents before the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and that he showed classified documents to people. 

Other articles that drew attacks from conservatives include reports that prosecutors issued a subpoena for information about some of Trump’s foreign business dealings and that Trump aides were subpoenaed about the firing of cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs after he debunked Trump’s lies about the security of voting machines in 2020.

Trump has attacked Smith for months on his social media account, and some of his attorneys recently sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting a meeting and whining that Trump “is being treated unfairly.” But following the most recent news reports on the strength of the evidence against Trump, conservative media are stepping up their own attacks on Smith, mostly by accusing him of leaking information about the Trump investigations or claiming that he personally hates Trump.

• On June 1, Newsmax host Rob Schmitt introduced a segment on the CNN story by saying: “Special counsel Jack Smith's investigators are leaking like crazy to inflict maximum damage on former President Trump.”
• During Schmitt’s segment, former Trump acting director of national intelligence Ric Grenell said: “Look, these people leak all the time. They're trying to leak because they really don't have anything on the president.” Grenell baselessly added: “We have to be quite clear that Jack Smith is very political, he’s very partisan, he hates Donald Trump. He's got a long history with trying to get Trump.” Grenell’s remarks echoed what he said in a May 20 interview elsewhere, in which he said without evidence: “My accusation is that he became very political just because he hated Donald Trump,” and that “he’s highly political and extremely ambitious and selfish in his motives.”
• Also on June 1, OANN host Dan Ball said the FBI “just pulled a wag the dog this week,” adding: “Jack Smith jumps in and leaks information to CNN that there is an alleged audio recording of Donald Trump in the summer of 2021 where he’s acknowledging he has a classified document.”
• On May 31, Gateway Pundit published an article titled: “SMOKING GUN? Latest Leak by Jack Smith Involves Ridiculous War Plan by Dummy Mark Milley to ‘Deploy Massive Numbers of Troops’ into Iran – Something the White House Scoffed At.” The article claimed that “dirty Special Counsel Jack Smith” had leaked the information to CNN.
• A RedState contributor on May 31 claimed that this “leak” to CNN “should give no one confidence that any prosecution will be a fair pursuit of the law.”
• Citing a New York Times report on subpoenas of Trump aides, Washington Free Beacon reporter Chuck Ross wrote on Twitter on May 31: “Trump Special Counsel Jack Smith has expanded far beyond his initial mandate.”
• In a May 25 article, Gateway Pundit accused Smith’s prosecution team of “selectively leaking information about the investigations into Trump in an effort to derail his 2024 White House run.”
• On May 23, Gateway Pundit attacked Smith for “another Deep State leak” in an article headlined: “LEAK: Special Counsel Jack Smith Subpoenas Records on Trump Organization’s Real Estate Licensing in Foreign Countries.”
• Ross also tweeted on May 22, citing a report on Trump’s foreign business records being subpoenaed: “Mueller and now Jack Smith expanded their investigations far behind their initial focus and media was totally on board.”

---

---

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/another-far-right-group-was-posting-conspiracy-theories-about-voter-roll-program-as-red-states-cut-ties

tpm 4 23

as Republican-led states pull out of a multistate voter roll program in response to Gateway Pundit-pushed conspiracy theories about the organization, a conservative nonprofit was apparently also part of fanning the flames.

Judicial Watch, a far-right legal advocacy group, published a white paper in early March boosting erroneous claims about the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a bipartisan program designed to maintain voter rolls across state lines. 

The paper, which the non-profit reupped on their website Friday, sought to legitimize debunked claims made by the far-right website Gateway Pundit last year, which falsely argued that ERIC was founded by “left-leaning attorney David Becker” and funded by GeorgeSoros.

Judicial Watch claims that Becker had a “history of left-wing activism and unethical conduct,” and that ERIC “shares the vast amount of sensitive personal data it receives from member states with another liberal non-profit, the Center for Election Innovation and Research,” which they linked to the “Zuckerbucks” controversy, another election-related conspiracy theory.

Becker did help a handful of states launch the non-partisan program with a group called the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2012, but Soros never directly contributed to ERIC.Becker has sat on ERIC’s board as a non-voting ex-officio member since its founding, but on March 14 he announced that he would be vacating the position due to the conspiracy theories about his role that were being pushed by the right-wing media.

The Judicial Watch report was originally published on March 9, three days after Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) announced that his state would be withdrawing from the program alongside Missouri and West Virginia. That afternoon, former president Donald Trump attacked ERIC on Truth Social as well:

“All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up,” he wrote. “It’s a fools game for Republicans…”

On March 10, Texas officials also signaled their interest in leaving the program, and they’ve since drawn up legislation to do so. Ohio and Iowa announced their departures on March 17.

ERIC executive director Shane Hamlin posted an open letter on March 2 trying to bat down misinformation about the program, but it didn’t stop what would become a wave of red state officials cutting ties with the program.

---

---

an 3 23 deep state BS?

Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) revealed over the weekend that he and other right-wing lawmakers may intend to pursue criminal charges against members of the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection.

"Is there a chance that you guys could prosecute certain members of Congress, Congress, or former members of Congress over the January 6th riots?" asked Gateway Pundit correspondent Jordan Conradson.

"I, I, I would not, uh, leave it just that. I think there's also military that are involved and I think that there, you know, heads have to roll.Otherwise, you condone this, uh, lawlessness and that's what America sees. We see lawlessness in Chicago. We see lawless on our border. We see lawlessness everywhere," Gosar said. "And that's part of the purpose. Precipitating actions that congresses is had allowed."

READ MORE: [GOPers Louie Gohmert and Paul Gosar may suffer from 'serious cognitive issues': January 6th advisor

Gosar also implied that he believes in a nationwide conspiracy concocted by high-level officials to make the country more dangerous.

"So are you looking into any inquiries, resolutions of inquiries into [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman] Mark Milley or [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Myorkas over their handling of our national security?" Conradson wondered.

"Stay tuned," Gosar joked.

Watch below orat this link.

How Paul Gosar emerged as a far-right favorite and subsequently the 'most dangerous man in Congress’

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

• 'He has no core set of beliefs': Adam Schiff torches Kevin McCarthy for courting the 'QAnon caucus' ›
• Warring Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert had to be separated at GOP conference: report ›
• 'Faked being Jewish': George Santos scorned for defending Ilhan Omar's ouster from House committee ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Ali Alexander Warned Paul Gosar About Violence on Jan. 6 ... ›
• House censures Rep. Gosar for violent video in rare rebuke | AP News ›
• Paul Gosar: House votes to censure and remove Republican ... ›

---

---

HARWELL: Yeah, 100%. I think that was the most stunning claim she made, and that was one that was a real headline from one of the committee hearings, which was that Twitter, in her words, protected Trump because he was a star.You know, he had brought a large amount of attention and clout to Twitter. Twitter in social media is effectively an also-ran, right? They're not a Facebook or an Instagram or a TikTok. They're a news platform, and Donald Trump helped make Twitter into a very influential company. And so in her words, she felt like the company had become deferent to Trump because they felt like they couldn't punish somebody who was beneficial in this way. There was kind of a mutually beneficial arrangement here.

But there were other people who spoke to the company, too, from inside Twitter that also suggested that there was some fear of the backlash of being too tough on Trump. And, you know, even before January 6, Trump had always been very infamous for what he would say on Twitter, as anybody who was online during those years knew. I mean, it was a lot of borderline or over-the-line tweets that people were wondering, why is Donald Trump able to talk like this on the platform? Anybody else who was sharing these kinds of messages would be treated differently, and this is what Anika ended up saying to the committee - was that he was treated differently. He was given special treatment because of this impactful role he had in the company....

:{:{}:

}:

You know, I will say Facebook had stood up some election integrity efforts even before January 6 that were about, you know, if somebody posts something about the election being stolen, we're going to post a disclaimer that actually that's false. We're going to link you to proactive, right, accurate information. Facebook had very notably disbanded those efforts before January 6. I think they sort of felt like the election's over; we're not needed anymore. That was specifically called out as an institutional failure that could have led to some of these things. But it all sort of came back to, could the company have done more, taken down more, been more active in addressing these calls to violence? And would that have made any difference on January 6?

DAVIES: There was also mention in this memo that you and your colleagues found of a white list that Facebookkept of certain accounts that were exempted from the fact-checking that would occur on other accounts. Among the people on that list -Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. Glenn Beck, Gateway Pundit, various other conservative things. Did the committee find that troubling, the committee's investigators?

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/kari-lake-and-supporters-storm-right-wing-media-hype-her-flimsy

no lnx vid

Kari Lake and supporters storm right-wing media to hype up her flimsy election lawsuit

WRITTEN BY JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SOPHIE LAWTON

PUBLISHED 12/14/22

On December 9, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake filed an election contest complaint against Secretary of State and Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs and various Maricopa County officials, alleging that the 2022 general election in the county was fraudulent for a host of reasons, and demanding either that the election be redone or that Kari Lake be installed as the rightful governor of Arizona.

:{:{}:

}:

Once the lawsuit was filed, Lake; her lawyer, election denier Kurt Olsen (who was just sanctioned for false claims in a different election lawsuit on Lake’s behalf); War Room host Steve Bannon; and Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft immediately launched an effort to promote the complaint and twist its evidence to say it proves more than it does. In actuality, the 70-page lawsuit requires readers to extrapolate most of its accusations based on flimsy evidence from the 2020 election and thus assumed to be true of 2022. 

Generally, these figures erroneously claim that the complaint provides proof that that nearly 130,000 ballots have unverified or unverifiable signatures, that nearly 300,000 illegal votes were cast in Maricopa, that 72% of voters agree there was election interference in the county, and that 59% of the voting machines were down in Maricopa County.

Here are their claims and the facts that counter them:

Claim: Signature verification did not happen in Maricopa County

Hoft claimed on December 10 that in the lawsuit, “they speak about mail-in ballot signatures, and they include some examples in the filing, which is basically just scribble.” According to Hoft, this means “there's basically no signature validation going on in Arizona.”

Video CitationFrom the December 10, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

On December 12, Lake said, “We believe more than 130,000 votes possibly have terrible voter verification and shouldn’t have been counted. We have whistleblowers who were part of that signature verification who said everyday, they were churning out tens of thousands of ballots that should not have even been in the system. They had fake or no signatures or scribbles, but they were somehow pushed through by somebody in the verification process.”

In an interview with the Gateway Pundit published December 12,Olsen said, “We have actual ballot — the ballot signature images — and the control signatures that are used to validate those signatures.” He claimed that this visual evidence was very strong and presented a hypothetical: “If I am to say to you that we have, you know, 100,000 ballot envelope images, and of that, 17,000 we can show that the signatures are a complete mismatch.”

Video CitationDecember 12, 2022, streamed on The Gateway Pundit

Olsen claimed that they have identified “tens of thousands of mismatched signatures from 2020. We have whistleblowers from MTEC doing signature verification in 2020, who say the same thing is happening in 2022,” referring to the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center. He added: “Either the signatures that are on file with the state as the control group are fake, or the ones on the ballots, the ballot envelopes are. There’s no in between — the mismatch is so stark.”

Olsen also appeared on War Room to defend the lawsuit, arguing that articles pointing out weaknesses in the lawsuit are “gaslighting” people in order “to keep people from looking, themselves, at the evidence,” particularly on the signature verification issue: “We put an image of the two signatures side by side. There are tens of thousands of those.”

Reality: The lawsuit includes only one example of a “scribbled” signature

The lawsuit includes only one example of an allegedly mismatched signature, and it is an example from 2020. It uses this to claim that “tens of thousands of ballots with signature mismatches” were allowed in 2020, and extrapolates this to mean “they did the same thing with the 2022 general election.”

This allegation is furthered by more claims that ballots with unverifiable signatures were accepted in the 2020 general election. The lawsuit says this also must have happened in 2022, noting that some of the same people with questionable signatures from 2020 also voted in 2022.

The lawsuit also cites statements from multiple election workers from Maricopa County claiming that in the 2022 general election, they and their co-workers did not reject as many ballots as they expected to, and the “most likely explanation” was that “the level 2 managers who re-reviewed the rejections of level 1 workers were reversing and approving signatures that the level 1 workers excepted and rejected.”

Outside of an assumed example from 2020 and three Maricopa County election workers saying they did not have as many mismatched signatures as they expected to have, the lawsuit shows no actual evidence that it happened in 2022. As far as one can tell from the lawsuit itself, there are not “tens of thousands” of examples, as Lake’s team would have people believe.

Lake herself admitted on War Room that they don’t have the evidence they claim to; the lawsuit was filed, in part, to get access to it: “We’re looking for relief. We want to take a look at all of the ballots, not the ballots, but the signatures on the envelopes, to compare how many were actually matching. We’d like to take a look at those, and look at the ballots.”

Claim: 300,000 illegal votes were cast in Maricopa County

Lake and her supporters tend to cite this claim as the strongest evidence of fraud in Maricopa. They argue that chain of custody documents, which help track mail-in ballots, were not filled out for nearly 300,000 ballots collected from dropboxes on Election Day, meaning that all 300,000 were illegal and should not have been counted.

Kari Lake said plainly on December 12, “We believe there were hundreds of thousands of illegal votes counted and we believe our lawsuit proves it.” Later on, she added they “threw in about 300,000 ballots with no chain of custody; those are illegal ballots. We have no way to prove where they came from, whose they are.”

Video CitationFrom the December 12, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of the right-wing organization Star News, said on December 10’s War Room that the claim that “they don’t have chain of custody for 298,000 early votes” on Election Day alone gives the judge “a strong legal reason to grant the remedy,” though he admitted he had not “seen the exhibits that show that.”

Video CitationFrom the December 10, 2022, edition ofReal America's Voice's War Room

Hoftadded that the lawsuit alleged “hundreds of thousands, they said, of illegal ballots, and they're going to prove that in court.”

Olsen said that “there were over 300,000 ballots that don’t have proper chain of security,” which he said means that “there’s no way to tell where those ballots came from.”

Reality: They call all mail-in ballots collected on Election Day “illegal”

Lake’s supporters neglect to mention that they’re referring to all ballots that were collected from dropboxes in Maricopa County on Election Day when they cite the 300,000 figure. They allege, in part, that there must be no chain of custody forms tracking them because their team is personally unable to find them.

Claim: 72% of Democrats and Republicans agree that there was election interference in Maricopa County

On December 10, Hoft said that the lawsuit “opened with the fact that 72% of Democrats and Republicans believe that people were deprived of their right to vote that day” and that voters “understand that there was election interference involved.”

Two days later, Bannon said to Lake, “You know, 72% of the people think that something went on here.”

Reality: The poll they reference is described in the complaint is a poll of “likely U.S. voters,” but the lawsuit text gives no indication of party affiliation.

The poll itself is from right-wing polling group Rasmussen Reports, which surveyed 750 individuals nationwide on whether they agreed with the following Kari Lake statement about Arizona: “This isn't about Republicans or Democrats. This is about our sacred right to vote, a right that many voters were, sadly, deprived of on November 8th.” There was no mention of “election interference” in any of the questions asked.

Claim: 59% of voting machines were down in Maricopa County

According to Hoft, the lawsuit claimed that “59% of the machines” in the county “were not operating that day.” With this established, Hoft asked, “At what point is the election null and void? Is it 40%? Is it 50%? Or do you have to wait until there's 80% of the machines that aren't working? I mean, at what point, how much abuse are we going to take as Republicans and allow this to continue?”

Reality: The lawsuit alleges “widespread tabulator or printer failures at 59% of the 223 vote centers,” not 59% of the machines.

Further, this argument contends that “there were rampant breakdowns at no less than 132” voting centers, rather than the approximately 70 that Maricopa County officials identified. It is supported, in part, by statements in supplementary court documents from the members of the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity Team, who allege that “Republican poll observer[s]” told them that there had been tabulator issues at their voting site. Many of these statements are not firsthand accounts.

After explaining the allegations in the lawsuit, Lake laundered her image to the War Room audience, implying that the relief they’re seeking is simply for the election to be “set aside or thrown out or redone.” Not once does she state that they ask for her to be unquestionably installed into the governorship via “an order setting aside the certified result of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election and declaring that Kari Lake is the winner of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.”

Video CitationFrom the December 12, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

This lawsuit relies on a preset acceptance of election denialism and a willingness to accept extraordinary assumptions based on distrust in the current election system. Without these preconceptions, it reads as a flimsy, unsubstantiated mash-up of coincidences and unverified suspicions twisted to declare Lake the rightful governor of Arizona because she did not expect to lose. As such, her supporters must go on right-wing media to push their efforts and lie ever so slightly about the contents of so as to not reveal that it is all a bluff.

---

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-and-jim-hoft-claim-**democrats-are-planning-steal-midterm-elections

---

---

mma 4 22

The far-right, conspiracy theorist website The Gateway Pundit has spent the weeks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine pumping out the Kremlin’s propaganda materials and narratives.

Founded in 2004 by Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit is a voraciously pro-Trump blog that has spread conspiracy theories about everything from the 2018 Parkland school shooting and former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, to the Las Vegas mass shooting and the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Most recently, the blog has served as a promotional platform for Russian propaganda in the month after the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Between March 6 and March 9, Hoft published three articles promoting the repeatedly debunked — and Russia-created — conspiracy theory that the U.S. was funding biological weapons in Ukraine.Two of those articles relied on Russian state media. The conspiracy theory quickly spread through the right-wing media ecosystem.

In the second half of March alone, the blog has based its coverage of the war in Ukraine on Russian propaganda at least four times:

• In a March 29 article, Gateway Pundit questioned “Western media outlets” and their portrayal of Russia’s position in the war in Ukraine. The site also said that Russia managed to destroy a “Ukrainian neo-Nazi entity that controlled Mariupol,” a claim that originally came from a Russian colonel-general and was reported by the Russian state media outlet TASS. Russia justified its invasion of Ukraine by promising to “denazify” the country and has seized on the existence of a far-right movement as proof. But the movement, which was active in Mariupol between 2014 and 2015, separated its political and military wings in 2016. Its military wing has since been integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard.
• In the same March 29 article, Gateway Pundit also attempted to throw cold water on reports that Russia was suffering “massive losses” in Ukraine. While the article didn’t mention hard numbers, on March 25 the Russian Defense Ministry told RT that the country lost 1,351 servicemen, a far cry from the western and Ukrainian estimates of anywhere between 7,000 and 15,000.
• On March 14, a Gateway Pundit article embedded a video of the Russian representative to the United Nations telling the UN Security Council that a U.S. program of biological research in Ukraine resulted in the spread of dangerous pathogens. In addition to the video, the article included a transcript but, naturally, no mention that the entire narrative around nefarious biological research labs and weaponizing pathogens has been debunked.
• On March 29, a Gateway Pundit article linked to a timeline from a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson alleging to show about 30 years’ worth of “US-Ukraine bioresearch.” The existence of the research labs was never a secret, but including the timeline implied a type of discovery. And the piece includes pro-Russian language that characterizes the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine as an “anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Ukraine.” The article did include a warning to view the information with “extreme caution,” before reprinting the entire timeline with no additional information.

In addition to relying on Russian disinformation and state media, Gateway Pundit has published several articles that advance Russian interests, including referring to Ukraine as a “former Soviet satellite,” claiming that the situation in Ukraine is “desperate” and “getting worse,” saying that President Joe Biden is in a state of cognitive decline, and claiming that Ukrainian refugees at the U.S. southern border are being turned away because of COVID-19. (Russia has been running an anti-vaccine campaign in Ukraine.)

This is not the first time the website has repeated Russian propaganda. In 2016, articles promoted misinformation about supposed voter fraud by the Democratic Party that originated from the Russian troll farm the Internet Research Agency.

The Gateway Pundit has long been a far-right cesspool of conspiracy theories and hoaxes. The site has called for violence against Democrats, endorsed white nationalists, and celebrated the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6. And now it’s actively aiding an unprovoked, unwarranted, and inhumane invasion by giving a platform to Russian propaganda and spin.

==

1 22 an

[media crit]

Donald Trump went into the 2020 election with some of the worst approval ratings on record for a sitting president. He made virtually no effort to appeal to those who didn’t vote for him. How was he able to remain standing, and how did he even potentially have a chance at a second term even if he lost the popular vote? One big reason is that he and his acolytes had convinced their base that the media can’t be trusted.

As we know by now, whenever the media aired even mildly critical coverage of Trump or those who were supposedly helping him make America great again, the response on the right was some variation of “(noun) (verb) fake news!” Indeed, it’s almost an article of faith among the Republican base that the media can’t be trusted.

If your news diet consists of the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, right-wing social media, and Christian conservative outlets, you probably think that when the mainstream media isn’t making things up, it’s crossing lines that should never be crossed in order. But there’s one problem—with few exceptions, it’s right-wing media that engages in that very behavior. And while some of those elements are finally answering for the worst of their sins, others are long overdue for a dose of accountability.

Contrary to what Trump and his diehards would have us think, whenever mainstream media outlets make a mistake, those mistakes are usually corrected fairly quickly once caught.A case in point was a 2017 editorial in *The New York Times* that held 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin partly responsible for a grisly 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. The Old Grey Lady’s editorial board claimed that just days before the shooting, Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that placed stylized crosshairs on the districts of 19 Democratic House members. The implication was clear—that map was a big reason why one of those lawmakers, then-Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, nearly died that day.

That claim was slammed on all sides of the aisle, prompting the Times to partly retract the editorial within five hours of it going online. All of the inaccurate information was retracted within two days.Despite this, Palin sued the Times for defamation. As near as can be determined, Palin is suing because she didn’t just want the Times to retract, but to grovel. The suit was due to go to trial in late January, but was pushed back to early February after the rabidly anti-vaccine Palin caught COVID-19.

Palin faces tough sledding under current precedent for libel and defamation suits. As a public figure, she would have to prove that when the editorial board greenlighted the initial version of the editorial, it did so acting with actual malice. That is, Palin would have to convince a jury that the editorial board either knew the story was false or published it with reckless disregard for whether it was true or false. Remember, the statements at issue were retracted in almost no time at all in modern media terms. Her onlychance of winning is to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court in hopes of making it easier for public figures to win libel suits.

As it currently stands, Palin’s suit betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how media outlets with actual standards work. Indeed, the Times’ quick retraction stands in marked contrast to the behavior of celebrity gossip blog Gawker. In March 2016, Gawker was effectively forced out of business when it was ordered tocough up $140 million in damages to pro wrestler Hulk Hogan for posting a clip of a sex tape of Hogan. While its sister sites (such as sports culture blog Deadspin, tech blog Gizmodo, and feminist blog Jezebel) were sold to Univision at a bankruptcy auction, Gawker itself wasshut down that August. Ultimately, Gawker settled with Hogan for $31 million that November.

A number of observers slammed the verdict for itspotential chilling effect on freedom of the press, especially after billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thielrevealed that he had bankrolled the suit. Thiel openly admitted that he wanted to punish Gawker after its now-defunct tech gossip sister, Valleywag, outed him as gay in 2007. Indeed, in a post-mortem about Gawker on its last day of business, NPR media reporter David Folkenflikobserved that Thiel’s involvement in Hogan’s suit against Gawker portended “ugly implications for press freedom in light of adversaries with nearly infinite resources.”

At its peak in 2015, Gawker hadover 23 million visits per month, making it one of the most visited sites in the world. With that level of popularity, it’s only fair to wonder—why was no one willing to ride to Gawker’s rescue? Granted, potential buyers might have beenskittish about having to deal with the massive legal headache of a lawsuit bankrolled by a billionaire. But surely someone with the wherewithal to withstand Thiel’s resources would have rescued Gawker solely on the principle of defending freedom of the press, right?

By then, however, Gawker had lost a lot of goodwill as a result of two instances where its disregard for standards dating back to the days of typewriters and leaflets was exposed for all to see. In 2015, Gawker ran an article that claimed Conde Nast Chief Financial Officer David Geithner, the brother of President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was being extorted by a gay porn star and male escort. As the story goes, when Geithner reneged on a deal to meet up with the porn star on a trip to Chicago, the escort went to Gawker and offered to tell all. He supplied copies of text exchanges between himself and Geithner and a selfie that Geithner supposedly sent him.

When the story went live, the criticism came inhard,fast, and fromall directions.Most of the detractors argued that it served no public interest to even imply that Geithner was gay. For example, the University of Minnesota’s Jane Kirtley, a media law expert, told The Daily Beast that absent evidence that Geithner gave “preferential treatment to people in the hiring process” or was guilty of sexual harassment, she was “really hard-pressed” to see a legitimate reason for running the story.

But this story had a more fundamental problem than lack of public interest. It was sourced almost entirely from a guy who was extorting Geithner. Specifically, the bulk of the story came from texts provided to Gawker staff writer Jordan Sargent. Despite this, according to Mother Jones, Gawker took onlyone working day to research, vet, and fact-check the story before it went live.

A number of media experts found the rapid turnaround time for this story extremely problematic. Ken Paulson, former editor-in-chief of USA Today and current president of the First Amendment Center, told Mother Jones that stories that could even potentially wreck someone’s reputation “are typically vetted over a longer period.” Over that time, Paulson added, details could come up that “could give you pause about publishing.” First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams was interviewed in the same article, saying that when there is evidence of blackmail or extortion, it ought to be “a blinking yellow light, or even a blinking red light” to thoroughly vet it before you even consider publishing it.

Gawker’s defense, at the time, seemed to be that the story was true and nothing else mattered. In response to withering criticism—including from Gawker’s own readers—Natasha Vargas-Cooper of Jezebel harrumphed in a since-deleted tweet that in her mind, “if it’s true, you publish.”

The fact that Gawker seemed to justify this story simply because it was true appeared especially tone-deaf a mere four years after the News of the World wasforced out of existence due to rampant phone-hacking. Indeed, Gawker’s ethos appeared little different from that of WikiLeaks. By then, we’d known since at least 2010 that Julian Assange’s idea of transparency includedreleasing unredacted Social Security numbers—and dismissing any potential harm as “collateral damage.”

A mere 18 hours after the story went live, Gawker Media’s six-member managing partnershipvoted to remove it over thefurious objections of Gawker’s editorial staff. But when Gawker founder and CEO Nick Denton deliveredthe official explanation for removing the post, he proved that he still didn’t get it.

Denton said that the story about Geithner was “true and well reported,” which would have been enough to justify running it “in the early days of the Internet.” However, he said, “Gawker is no longer the insolent blog that began in 2003,” and this meant that potential stories “have to be true and interesting” in order to pass editorial muster. Denton went further in a memo to Gawker’s editorial team, saying that he was “ashamed” to have his name attached to the story, even if “we were within our legal right to publish.”

There are times when what was considered good reporting years ago is patently unacceptable now. For instance, the relentless coverage of Britney Spears in the early 2000swould never be tolerated today given greater awareness about mental health and sexism. But this didn’t even come close to being one of those times. By suggesting that an article that essentially amounted to aiding and abetting extortion would be even remotely acceptable in 2003, Denton made his statement announcing the article’s deletion amount to a non-apology apology. It also casts a pall on the good that Gawker actually did—like turning the hot lights on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s substance abuse, or revealing that Bill O’Reilly used his influence to start an investigation of his ex-wife’s boyfriend.

Soon after the furor over the Geithner article died down, it became even clearer just how serious Gawker’s cultural problem was. In July 2015, Vanity Fair writer Richard Lawsontweeted a mea culpa about his days at Gawker. He admitted that he’d written, on orders from his boss, “baseless posts accusing an actor of raping an ex-boyfriend.” That actor wasJames Franco.

From 2008 to around 2014, Gawker churned out a series of articles that attempted to out Franco. The first of these articles, penned by Lawson, was a follow-up to ablind item in the New York Postin which an unidentified actor reportedly broke into his former boyfriend’s apartment and violently raped him. Inhis article, Lawson mused that the three likely suspects were Will Smith, Christian Bale—and Franco.

Soon afterward, Lawsonwrote another article suggesting that based on Gawker commenters’ sentiment, “the people” felt Franco was a gay rapist. He then followed that up witha third article suggesting that the “gay rapist” Franco had actually been mentioned by the person who tipped off the Post about the supposed violent attack. If there is any difference between that article and Trump’s penchant for spewing baseless garbage that’s supposedly based on what “many people are saying,” I don’t see it.

Later, other Gawker writerspenned articles suggesting that Franco was gay, based on the thinnest reeds of evidence. According to The Daily Beast, this was part of Gawker’s “creepy obsession with outing closeted men.” Granted, Franco is no angel. In 2021, he not only settled a lawsuit alleging that he harassed several students at the acting school he ran from 2014 to 2017, but admitted sleeping with some of his students.

Seen in this light, it’s no wonder that it took more than six years and at least one false start for Gawker to be revived. It returned in the summer of 2021 as a sister publication to women’s magazine Bustle, who bought Gawker’s remains in 2019. One would have thought that given Gawker’s popularity, it would have been revived sooner. However, NPR’s Folkenflik noted that when Univision bought Gawker’s sister sites, it concluded that Gawker itself was “too toxic to touch.”

Given how long it took for Gawker to be revived, any potential white knights must have reached the same conclusion. Who would want to take on an organization that not only believed there was a time where extortion was at all acceptable, but had no qualms about running libel?

Indeed, even as I write this, the articles libeling Franco are still available on Gawker’s website. That contrasts sharply with how the Times handled the initial version of its editorial attack on Palin. Contrary to what she and her fellow deplorables would have us believe, mainstream media outlets have standards—and those that lack standards get culled.

The same, however, can’t be said for some mainstays of right-wing media. For instance, when former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore made a bid for the U.S. Senateseat that came open when Jeff Sessions was tapped as Trump’s attorney general, Breitbart led a relentless smear campaign against the women who claimed Moore sexually assaulted them or pursued improper relationships with them. And it did so even though its editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow,believed at least one of the accusers was credible.

Marlow made this shocking assertion in an interview with CNN’s Oliver Darcy in December 2017, a month after Moore’s narrow loss to Democrat Doug Jones. He revealed that he believed that Moore’s initial accuser, Leigh Corfman, had “a lot of credibility.” Corfman, you may recall, claimed Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 14.

By admitting that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible even as Breitbart was smearing them, Marlow effectively put big, fat asterisks by every story Breitbart ran about the election. Victim shaming is bad enough, but doing so when you have reason to believe a victim is telling the truth is absolutely heinous. It’s even more so considering that Marlow admitted Breitbart went all-in for Moore to protect Trump.

Project Veritas also joined in on this disgraceful campaign. Its ringleader, James O’Keefe, even went as far as having one of his minions, Jaime Phillips, try to plant a bogus story in The Washington Postclaiming that Moore had impregnated her.But that story came apart when the Post did some actual journalism and discovered Phillips’ story had more red flags than a lifetime of Alabama football games. Most damningly, Phillips had created a GoFundMe page boasting about her goal to join “the conservative media movement” in exposing “the liberal MSM.”

To pile obscenity on top of insult, O’Keefe revealed in December 2017 that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible. And yet, he felt compelled to smear them because—wait for it—he felt their credibility was “not my subject matter,” and his real goal was exposing “bias in the media.” So the man whose stock in trade is targeting journalists for supposed bias admitted that doing so was so important that he felt compelled to shame victims that he believed were credible. Let that sink in.

To give you an idea how outrageous Breitbart and Project Veritas’ behavior was here, imagine if every news outlet that passed on the prospect of exposing Harvey Weinstein’s depravities had reason to believe Weinstein’s accusers were credible—and yet ran stories effectively calling them liars. It makes Palin’s squawking about theTimes’ failure to basically grovel before her look hypocritical as all hell.

Fortunately, at least two other members of the deplorable fever swamp are facing long-overdue accountability. Take InfoWars, for instance. Even after Alex Jones was kicked off mainstream social media and blackballed from smartphone app stores, it looked like he was going to continue his years-long promotion of conspiracy theories and hate speech—albeit with a much reduced audience.

But what may have been the beginning of the end for Jones came in 2018, not long after Facebook and YouTube gave him the boot. Several families of Sandy Hook victims, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones for defamation. Specifically, they wanted Jones held to account for his numerous claims that the Sandy Hook victims and survivors were “crisis actors.” These claims have resulted in the survivors being relentlessly harassed and trolled. The family of Noah Pozner, for instance, has had to move numerous times due to the harassment, and now live under high security in an undisclosed location. They have never been able to visit their son’s grave.

A series of legal reversals for Jones and InfoWars culminated in the fall of 2021. That September, a Texas judge issued three default judgments against Jones and InfoWars in two defamation suits filed by Sandy Hook families. The judge had lost patience with Jones’ refusal to turn over documents, and found it egregious enough to conclude that Jones had already lost. In November, a Connecticut judge issued a default judgment in a suit filed against Jones in another lawsuit. While damages will be determined at trial later this year, they are likely to add up to hundreds of millions of dollars—in all likelihood, enough to put InfoWars out of business.

Another fixture of the deplorable fever swamp, Gateway Pundit,may also face extinction after beingsued for orchestrating a vicious trolling campaign that falsely accused Georgia election workers of stealing their state for Joe Biden. The two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, claim that Gateway Pundit started a flood of disinformation that reached all the way to Trump, who attacked Freeman by name in his now-infamous attempt to shake down Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Dozens of bogus stories about Freeman and Moss resulted in death threats, doxing, and kidnapping attempts, among other things. Rather than apologize, Gateway Pundit actually tried to raise money off the lawsuit, netting over $81,000.If there is any justice, though, that fundraising effort will be a futile exercise. Gateway Pundit and its impresarios, the Hoft brothers, ought to get a very hard lesson on why private citizens only need to prove negligence in order to win libel suits.

The Times moves in almost no time at all by current media standards to retract claims about Palin—and yet, Breitbart, Project Veritas, and Gateway Pundit refuse to even attempt to apologize for far worse. What’s wrong with this picture?

The answer to that question is simpler than you may think. For all the caterwauling we hear from the right about the media not having any standards, we have seen instance after instance where the media has shown it actually does. Moreover, whenever elements of the mainstream press show they don’t have standards, they are weeded out. The demise of Gawker is a stark example of what happens when you catapult your way into the mainstream, only to show you have little regard for basic standards of decency.

If we are to remove the tinder from our politics, we must subject the media to the same level of accountability that Gawker faced, and what InfoWars is more than likely to face. As Gawker learned in 2016, that standard ought to apply regardless of political shade. But if Palin and other right-wingers are willing to take off their blinders, they would see that their own side of the media divide is long overdue for a cleaning.

Poll 426 votes Show Results

---

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/biden-suv/

raw

Gateway Pundit, a Trump-loving website notorious for peddling bogus conspiracy theories, is now falsely claiming that President Joe Biden faked his drive of an electric SUV earlier this week.

The president this week traveled to Michigan to pitch his new infrastructure bill, and he also got a chance to take a spin in Ford's new electric F-150 SUV as a way to promote his proposed investments in electric cars.

Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft, however, took a screen cap that happened to catch the passenger's arm placed on the dashboard at an angle that made it look like he was holding the steering wheel along with Biden.

"Following his speech, the declining septuagenarian was put in an electric vehicle where he pretended to be driving," Hoft wrote. "This was all a show by his handlers to make Joe Biden look like he's in charge."

Watching a video of Biden's drive, however, clearly shows that the passenger who was riding with the president had his arm on the dashboard, not the steering wheel.

See the video yourself below.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

• Black Army Lt. pulled over, terrorized, and beaten even though ... ›
• Fox & Friends host makes social distancing 'joke' about horrific crash ... ›
• Texas 'Trump Train' of flag-bearing pickups ambushes Biden-Harris ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Biden Calls For An All-Electric Federal Fleet. GM Is Going Electric ... ›
• Omaha drama: Brother calls cops after Biden-backing sister takes ... ›
• SMPD working in cooperation with FBI investigation into Biden bus ... ›

---

ref no pix twt

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahmimms/arizona-election-results-oan-reporters-fundraising

two reporters at One America News, a far-right TV station, are running a dark money organization that they say is helping fund a counter-reality “audit” that former president Donald Trump and his supporters believe will overturn Arizona’s 2020 election results in his favor.

What’s more, one of those reporters, Christina Bobb, is the network’s most visible correspondent covering the very “audit” that she is helping scare up money for on OAN’s airwaves, while she and the network enjoy unique access to the process where private contractors and volunteers are searching for fraud and have examined ballots for nonexistent watermarks and “bamboo fibers.” OAN has a deal as the exclusive livestream partner for the audit.

:{:{}:

Christina Bobb hosting her show Weekly Briefing on OAN pix]

}:

Bobb has not made a secret of her work to keep that audit going. On April 9, she tweeted that she’d founded a group called Voices and Votes to help the Republican-led Arizona Senate complete its audit of the vote in Maricopa County. The group reached its $150,000 fundraising goal that same day,according to Bobb, and she’s continued soliciting money for the audit since, both on Twitter and on air.

According to its website, Voices and Votes is run by Bobb as the CEO and president, as well as OAN’s White House correspondent Chanel Rion, who is listed as the chief marketing officer, and Courtland Sykes, Rion’s fiancé, who is listed as the group’s chief operations officer. The group’s website also says that Voices and Votes is registered as a 501(c)(4) organization, meaning its donors will never be made public.

That also means that the group will never have to give an accounting of how much money it has raised or where that money actually went. Bobb did not respond when BuzzFeed News asked how much Voices and Votes has brought in, but insisted that all of the money raised “has gone to the auditors.”Cyber Ninjas, the firm leading the audit, and its CEO did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether it had received money from Voices and Votes.

twt]

it’s important to pause here and note that the audit itself is not really an audit at all. What happened is the Arizona Senate, which is controlled by 16 Republicans (to 14 Democrats) sent a subpoena to Maricopa County, which was upheld by a judge, forcing the county to hand over 2.1 million ballots, as well as vote tabulators and a bunch of election data. The “audit,” which is being run by outside contractors hired by the Senate, will have no force or effect on the 2020 election results; Joe Biden is president, and Arizona already did an audit of Maricopa County in the presidential race and didn’t find a single ballot discrepancy. The county itself, which is not involved in the current Senate audit either, also hired two independent firms to review its elections equipment in February, which came back clean as well.

On Monday, Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, which is majority Republican, wrote a scathing letter to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, calling the audit a threat to democracy and telling her to end it. “The Arizona Senate is not acting in good faith, has no intention of learning anything about the November 2020 General Election, but is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings. ... The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled,” the board wrote.

But, as Bobb told her OAN audience a few weeks ago, the new Senate audit will “unravel the Democrats' schemes from 2020” and Trump “will determine our next House and Senate” — whatever that means. In the same segment, she backtracked slightly, saying that “maybe” the audit would show there was no fraud. “Maybe,” she said, laughing, “Biden legitimately won Arizona.”

Needless to say, no legitimate newsroom would allow its reporters to fundraise for an actual news event they’re covering. Nonetheless, Bobb has continued soliciting donations for Voices and Votes, actively fundraising to keep the story she is covering going. Bobb tweeted as recently as April 28 that the audit isn’t “fully funded yet” and asked followers to “please help get this audit across the finish line!” That weekend she dedicated segments of her Weekly Briefing show to her reporting from the audit and an interview with the Arizona Republican Party chair.

[twt]

after reaching her $150,000 goal, Bobb announced the group’s “second pledge,” this time without naming a monetary goal, tweeting, “Let’s get this audit funded!” with a donation link.

Just a week later, the Arizona Republican Party tweeted that OAN would be the exclusive livestreamer of the audit. The network now runs nine cameras 24/7 showing contractors examining the 2.1 million ballots. And Bobb herself has been there reporting on it for OAN the whole time, posting photos of herself alongside some of the architects of the audit and thanking those “true Patriots” for making it happen.

Bobb and OAN are getting access to the audit that no other news outlets have, reporters on the ground say. While reporters at other Arizona and national media outlets have had to rotate through a few select spots to cover the audit, Bobb and a writer with the Gateway Pundit, another pro-Trump outlet, are exempted from that pool. She reported live from the coliseum where the audit is taking place every day last week.

Bobb disputed that she and OAN had received any “special treatment” in an email to BuzzFeed News on behalf of Voices and Votes. While she acknowledged that she had different access than members of the Arizona press corps, she said her access to cover the audit depended on “availability.” “I have been denied access at certain times and had to go on different days or at different times,” she wrote. “I am not permitted to attend whenever I want.”

Bobb also noted that OAN is not “in any way” affiliated with her fundraising group “other than allowing me to mention my efforts on air” and said the network “has not received anything as a result of Voices and Votes' donations.”

“I have openly and honestly disclosed all my efforts on air, and have handled the funds exactly as I said that I would,” she said.

Rion did not respond to requests for comment. Fann, the Senate president, deferred questions about OAN’s access to former Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett, who is serving as an audit liaison. Bennett did not respond to multiple requests.

OAN correspondent Chanel Rion asks then-president Donald Trump a question during a White House press briefing on April 6, 2020. pix ]

Bobb noted last week that Arizona senators won’t say what would happen if the audit does find “some type of fraud” — which won’t happen, because legitimate audits have already been conducted — and that senators have said this audit is about promoting trust in future elections, not about 2020. “They would not commit to saying that they would overturn anything, but they did say they were certainly taking a look at it,” she said, citing anonymous Arizona legislators.

OAN did not respond to requests for comment on the conflict between Bobb and Rion’s work for their network and their affiliation with Voices and Votes or whether the network has a conflict-of-interest policy.

The audit itself has so far been a farce, enough so that one of the Republican state senators who voted for it told the New York Times that in practice the audit is “ridiculous” and “makes us look like idiots.” At one point, workers were checking for any traces of bamboo in the ballot paper in a frankly stupid and racist attempt to test a conspiracy theory that thousands of illegal ballots were shipped in from Asia. They were shining UV lights on ballots for reasons that weren’t really explained by officials at the time but seemed to line up with a QAnon-adjacent theory that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security had watermarked real ballots so the Democrats’ fraudulent ones could be easily found. That prompted the Maricopa County Elections Department to publicly post a fact check: “There are NO watermarks on Maricopa County ballots.”

Then there’s the firm that the Arizona Senate hired to run the whole thing, Cyber Ninjas, owned by Doug Logan. As the Arizona Mirror reported, Logan repeatedly posted conspiracies about the election being stolen and falsehoods about Dominion Voting Systems on his since-deleted Twitter account. Logan is also the author of a three-page document of “election fraud facts” posted to former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s website intended for senators to use in explaining why they would object to the election results and try to give the White House back to Trump, the Mirror also reported. Logan, it's worth noting, stood behind the document in a statement to the Mirror.

His firm and three others are now paying contractors $15 an hour and bringing in volunteers to examine the ballots — among them was a former state representative who lost his 2020 race and was also filmed on the Capitol steps during the Jan. 6 insurrection. With the process taking way longer than expected, a big bill is coming and it’s unclear who is paying it.

The Arizona Senate only gave $150,000 in taxpayer money to the project, which they knew was a laughable sum for an election audit of this size, and is allowing Cyber Ninjas to raise the rest from whoever. And several prominent Trump supporters have stepped up. Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who has peddled some of the more out-there election conspiracy theories, kicked in $1 million and has his own dark money group raising funds, per the Arizona Republic. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told the Daily Beast that he had donated. And Lin Wood, an attorney who filed a bunch of lawsuits trying to overturn the election, told Talking Points Memo and confirmed to BuzzFeed News that his 501(c)(4) #FightBack had donated to Bobb’s Voices and Votes.

Meanwhile, reporters at other outlets who are not paying for the audit had to fight to cover it at all. At one point, the Arizona Senate told media that they could only have access to the audit if they signed up for at least five six-hour shifts as volunteer observers. To be clear, they wouldn’t then get to report on the audit, their only access under this plan was as workers for the audit they were trying to cover. And, the Senate said, they could not bring laptops or cellphones or even a paper and pen with them. “People observing even executions are allowed to bring their notebooks in with them,” Arizona Capitol Times reporter Julia Shumway, who has since covered the audit, told BuzzFeed News.

Shumway and her colleagues eventually did get press access to the audit, but only after the Arizona Mirror, the Arizona Republic, and the Arizona Broadcasters Association got lawyers involved. Now, reporters have to pool their resources with one print journalist, one videographer, and one photographer allowed into the audit at any given time, and they must be escorted, even to the bathroom, Shumway said. Meanwhile, Bobb and a reporter for the Gateway Pundit can report outside of the pool.

When asked about the discrepancy in treatment for OAN and the Gateway Pundit and every other news outlet, Fann told PBS that OAN was given livestreaming rights to the audit because “they have covered this from the beginning. They are one of the firms that came in right off the bat and said we will help do all the 24-hour video so everybody has access to this 24/7, that they wanted to be a part of it. So I don’t think that’s a bad idea. If there was another network had come up and said that first, we would have went with them probably.”

She later accused other, unnamed reporters of trespassing and said they had worried about too many members of the media “walk[ing] all over the place and tak[ing] pictures.” Asked if she had any similar concerns about OAN, she responded simply, “No, huh-uh. Nope.”

UPDATE

May 18, 2021, at 2:13 p.m.

The Arizona Mirror, the Arizona Republic, and the Arizona Broadcasters Association brought the legal fight to get reporters access to the audit. A previous version of this story was unclear on who led the legal effort.

---

---

521 HR1

FALSE: The Gateway Pundit’s Joe Hoft wrote, “In their first act, this Congress led by true communists apparently, is ready to pass a bill allowing all future elections in the USA to be run exactly the same as any communist regime in history.” He claimed the act “will eliminate free and fair elections forever. Fraud will be the mandate and Democrats, the kings of fraud, will win every election henceforth.”

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/trump-fox-feedback-loop-amplifies-deranged-conspiracy-theory-about-dominion-and-vote

no twt vid

Fox News propagandists continue to push fever-swamp fantasies that voting machines switched a large number of votes from President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden, even after election security officials conclusively determined that was not the case, and Trump is amplifying those wildly irresponsible claims to falsely assert that he won the election.

With his reelection hopes thwarted at the ballot box, Trump is trying to steal the election if he can and delegitimize it if he can’t, with the help of his sycophants at Fox and Republican leaders.

Those despicable and dangerous efforts originally revolved around baseless allegations of voter fraud committed through mail-in ballots. But as those claims have been shot down in court, Trump and his right-wing media allies have pushed increasingly deranged conspiracy theories about computer systems changing votes to benefit Biden. They have focused in particular on Dominion Voter Systems, which makes software used in voting machines in localities around the country, including some in Georgia and Michigan.

This campaign against the democratic system will not change the results of the election, but it has already resulted in a majority of Republicans believing the election was stolen from Trump.

On Thursday, Trump, who has spent the days since the election watching cable news coverage and ranting on Twitter, live-tweeted a segment from the far-right network One America News that claimed that “DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE.”

This claim is crazy, false, and apparently based on the “analysis” of an anonymous poster at a pro-Trump message board whose findings were credulously parroted by the Gateway Pundit conspiracy theory blog.

Trump’s tweet apparently spurred a response from Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, who said in a joint statement released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The signatories include top U.S. cybersecurity officials, state and local elections administrators, and voting machine industry representatives.

Even Fox’s “news” side pointed out that Trump’s claim was baseless. Network correspondent Eric Shawn reported on “the president's attacks on Dominion voting machines” during a Thursday night Special Report package, explaining that experts, including cybersecurity officials at DHS, say that what Trump claimed had not happened. He described Trump’s comments as “disinformation.”

But Fox Business host Lou Dobbs has never allowed facts to get in the way of his adulation for the president and his willingness to champion Trump’s lies. “President Trump is zeroing in on Dominion voting machines," he said, shortly before the CISA statement went out on Thursday evening. “Dominion voting systems used in 28 states across the country including battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.”

After highlighting purported flaws with the Dominion machines identified by Texas elections officials, he asked Trump lawyerRudy Giuliani, “How important do you believe the concerns that are being expressed in a number of states about the ability of these machines not to be hacked?” Giuliani replied, “First of all, the machines can be hacked. There's no question about that. Their machines can be hacked.” He added that Dominion was “founded as a company to fix elections. They have a terrible record and they are extremely hackable.”

Giuliani went on to claim that he had identified hundreds of thousands of “illegal votes” in Pennsylvania and Michigan that will “overturn the vote” in those states (this will not happen). He concluded, “This was a stolen election.”

Fox prime-time star and Trump operative Sean Hannity also the Dominion conspiracy theory, a few hours after federal, state, and local officials and his own network had debunked it. After describing purported flaws with Dominion systems, Hannity referred to a 2017 congressional hearing about cybersecurity of voting machines, airing a comment from an expert about “how you hack a voting machine to cheat” using a “vote stealing program” that, if installed, “could steal elections without detection for years to come.”

“Now, am I saying tonight this happened with Dominion in this cycle?” Hannity asked after airing that comment. “No. How would I possibly know?” But without further review, he claimed, “there's good reason to not have confidence or not to believe this is fair."

[vid]

trump cheered the Fox segments for pushing a conspiracy theory that had been debunked by his own government’s cybersecurity experts.

“Must see @seanhannity takedown of the horrible, inaccurate and anything but secure Dominion Voting System which is used in States where tens of thousands of votes were stolen from us and given to Biden,” he tweeted shortly after Hannity’s segment. “Likewise, the Great @LouDobbs has a confirming and powerful piece!”

Sharing video from Hannity’s segment on Twitter, Trump commented, “These states in question should immediately be put in the Trump Win column. Biden did not win, he lost by a lot!”

By the next morning, the conspiracy theory had made it to Fox & Friends, with George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley falsely claiming that Dominion voting systems switched “thousands” of Michigan votes --only to be shot down by Steve Doocy of all people, who pointed out that “the software did not affect the vote counts.”

The Trump-Fox feedback loop is powering increasingly unhinged attacks on American democracy. And the longer it goes on, the clearer it becomes that the Murdochs and other network executives either have no control over their hosts, or want them to do exactly what they’re doing.

---

expertise

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/this-researcher-wrote-the-book-on-presidential-failure-shes-never-see-anything-like-trumps

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-right-wing-coronavirus-deniers-want-to-kill-expertise-and-they-could-entice-trump-to-court-disaster/

no lnx

The right-wing coronavirus deniers want to kill expertise — and they could entice Trump to court disaster

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly March 31, 2020

Back in 2012, Donald Trump tweeted this:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

67.6K

12:15 PM - Nov 6, 2012

Twitter Ads info and privacy

109K people are talking about this

Paul Krugman is right to suggest that we might experience a bit of déjà vu when we watch how the president and his enablers are responding to the coronavirus.

Let me summarize the Trump administration/right-wing media view on the coronavirus: It’s a hoax, or anyway no big deal. Besides, trying to do anything about it would destroy the economy. And it’s China’s fault, which is why we should call it the “Chinese virus.”

Just as there are climate science deniers, there are a whole range of coronavirus deniers out there as well. They come in many different shapes and sizes, but the most common are those who simply deny the scope of the problem. While they accept that the virus exists, they tend to believe that Democrats, the media, or the “deep state” (pick your villain) are simply exaggerating the problem in order to make Trump look bad.

The more perverse of these folks started the Twitter hashtag, #FilmYourHospital. They take videos of the outside of hospitals and claim that the lack of activity indicates that the hype is all a hoax.

DeAnna Lorraine????

?

@DeAnna4Congress

Just went to 2 hospitals in LA to check out these “War Zones” the MSM keeps telling us about.??

They are very quiet & EMPTY.

We are not being told the truth. Why?? Let’s get #FilmYourHospital trending. We ARE the news now. We can’t trust the news. Post pics of ur hospital here!

Embedded video

32.6K

12:16 PM - Mar 29, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

26.1K people are talking about this

One of the most prominent coronavirus deniers is radio talk show host Bill Mitchell. His most recent schtick has been to rail against the “stay at home” orders being issued by governors.

Bill Mitchell

@mitchellvii

I promise you, when we granted Governors these emergency powers, no one envisioned them shutting down their state for months at a time and imposing martial law.

1,075

8:19 AM - Mar 31, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

463 people are talking about this

But it was Mitchell who initiated the right wing attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci. It all started back on March 3rd.

Bill Mitchell

@mitchellvii

So this Dr. Anthony Fauci is pushing the panic button today.  Always helpful. Talking about closing schools and businesses?

Hell, why don't we just shut down the whole country over 104 sick, 6 dead?

Sorry President Trump, but replace this crackpot.

Almost immediately Fauci was accused of being a Democratic plant. The idea that he was a member of the so-called “deep state” took hold and eventually an email from Fauci surfaced among those that had been released by WikiLeaks. In it, the doctor had praised Hillary Clinton for her testimony before the House Benghazi Committee. Now the deniers were off to the races. They were soon doing the same thing to Dr. Deborah Birx.

Bill Mitchell

@mitchellvii

EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Birx's Connections with the Clinton Foundation and Obama Unfortunately Indicate Conflicted Loyaltieshttps://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/03/exclusive-dr-birxs-connections-with-the-clinton-foundation-and-obama-unfortunately-indicate-conflicted-loyalties/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=PostTopSharingButtons&utm_campaign=websitesharingbuttons …

EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Birx's Connections with the Clinton Foundation and Obama Unfortunately Indicate...

Is Dr. Deborah Birx, the doctor with the scarf, a voice of reason or another Deep State doctor pushing economic disaster and suffering? Her past unfortunately provides the answer. Dr. Deborah Birx...

thegatewaypundit.com

281

9:48 AM - Mar 31, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

245 people are talking about this

Isaac Stanley-Becker makes the important point about all of this (emphasis mine).

[T]he disregard for expert guidance being pushed by some conservative and libertarian voices goes further — aimed not simply at proving Fauci wrong but at painting him as an agent of the “deep state” that Trump has vowed to dismantle. The smear campaign taking root online, and laying the groundwork for Trump to cast aside the experts on his own coronavirus task force, relies centrally on the idea that there is no expertise that rises above partisanship, and that everyone has an agenda.

This is something we’ve seen over and over again from right-wingers. Whenever someone says something they don’t like—especially if it challenges “dear leader”—all they have to do is find a remote connection to a Democrat (preferably Hillary Clinton), and the opposing opinion can be discarded as nothing more than partisanship. That is how the right is attempting to kill the whole notion of expertise—be it on anything from climate change to coronavirus. The mainstream media provides an assist to those efforts when they assume a “both sides” approach to every issue instead of prioritizing the truth.

Over the course of the last three months, Donald Trump has dallied in many of the opinions espoused by these coronavirus deniers. His decision to extend the guidelines calling for social distancing and other measures to mitigate the virus indicate that at this point, he’s still listening to the experts—even if it is merely for his own self-interest. But we’re not out of the woods yet. The deniers are waiting in the wings with their conspiracy theory guns loaded for the moment he grows impatient with the experts.

---

==

mma 3/22

...

• Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft told Alex Jones that coronavirus in the U.S. is “the deep state” trying to take out Trump.
• Fox News and right-wing media have seized on coronavirus crisis to attack abortion.
• Erick Erickson tweeted and then deleted a celebration of an Asian American reporter's offense at racist coronavirus comment.
• Fox’s Dan Bongino said that you can’t be racist about China because “China is not a race.”
• Rush Limbaugh guest host Mark Steyn said that San Francisco faces a COVID-19 shutdown because it's “a big gay town.” (In case you are wondering, Limbaugh was off all week.)

---

breakout dem debate v biden on bussing so

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/right-wing-site-launches-birther-styler-conspiracy-theory-about-kamala-harris-but-cnn-quickly-debunks-it/

Harris gave a showstopping performance Thursday night at the second Democratic debate, making her a prime target for criticism. And as a viral post from the far-right site Gateway Pundit showed, we can expect conservative media to generate more racist conspiracy theories about her, just like it did when Barack Obama rose to prominence.

CNN’s Daniel Dale, the most rigorous fact checker of the president, debunked the conspiracy theory, which will hopefully stop it in its tracks before it gets started. So here’s what we know is true about the facts in question:

• Harris was a part of the second class of integrated public elementary schools in Berkeley, California, in 1969
• While the elementary schools had been segregated before 1968, the high school in the city was not
• The segregation was not formally entrenched in law, but like much of the era’s racial discrimination, it was de facto segregation

Harris brought up her history of being part of early integration efforts in criticizing Joe Biden’s past positions on the issue and his comments about segregationists. It was the most powerful moment in Thursday’s debate.

The viral Gateway Pundit post, which I won’t link to, contested this history. It falsely said she “lied” and that the schools were integrated before she was born. But the evidence for this theory was a picture from the high school yearbook in 1963, which showed both black and white students listed together. As the facts listed above show, though, this is consistent with Harris’ account (which officials confirmed to Dale). She was part of the second integrated class at her elementary school, which had been segregated, even while the sole high school in the city was integrated.

It’s not clear if Gateway Pundit will issue a correction, or if it will just go on attacking Harris baselessly. But as we saw with the birther lie about President Barack Obama, racist smears against Democratic candidates can persist in the right-wing media world without any basis in fact. Indeed, you can spout this nonsense and still become president.

---

==

rww

818

an apparent response to a report by Right Wing Watch, Jim Hoft, founder of the right-wing blog Gateway Pundit, publicly announced this weekend that the site’s former White House reporter, Lucian Wintrich, had quietly left the site “several weeks ago.”

Last week, Right Wing Watch reported that Wintrich told us he was on paid leave from Gateway Pundit when we noted him engaging in a conversation promoting scientific racism with white nationalist podcast host Nicholas Fuentes. Although Hoft claims that Wintrich had left the site weeks ago, during the podcast, which first aired on August 7, Wintrich still claimed he was employed at the site and was introduced as “New York City bureau chief from the Gateway Pundit.” Hoft never responded to our emails.

---

https://www.alternet.org/can-lawsuits-slow-tide-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-seth-richs-family-wants-find-out

amanda m

In the era of Donald Trump, conspiracy theories aren't just getting more prominent and more numerous. They're also becoming more personal. One of the hallmarks of the modern era of social media-fueled, right-wing paranoia is the increasing tendency of conspiracy theorists to target not just politicians and celebrities for their lurid myth-making. Now such concoctions may affect the lives of ordinary people who, in the past, would likely have not had a high enough profile to attract this kind of obsessive rumor-mongering.

Now the targets are turning to the courts to fight back.The parents of the Sandy Hook massacre victims are suing Infowars founder Alex Jones for spreading conspiracy theories alleging that they faked their children's deaths. (Perhaps in an effort to shield himself, Jones has backed away from such theories and now says he believes the killings actually happened.)

Brennan Gilmore, a Virginia activist who happened to film the attack that killed Heather Heyer at the Charlottesville protests last summer, is also suing Jones and a blogger behind Gateway Pundit for conspiracy theories meant to discredit him. And the family members of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer murdered in July 2016, in what police say was a botched robbery, are suing Fox News and others for stoking conspiracy theories that Rich, rather than Russian agents, may have been behind the hack of Democratic emails given to WikiLeaks -- and was murdered in retaliation.

Now the circle of litigants has opened up further, as Brad Bauman, a public relations expert who has volunteered as the Rich family's spokesperson, is also suing a series of conservative figures for defamation, alleging that they have spread conspiracy theories accusing him of covering up for a nefarious Democratic Party plot.

Bauman's case is of particular interest to me, because it illustrates the way Trump-era conspiracy theories metastasize, growing ever more complicated and strange as conspiracy theorists attempt to integrate conflicting evidence into their overarching theory — and how, in the process, the number of people who become targets for harassment and abuse can grow.

“Having watched what Brad went through," Melissa Ryan, a progressive activist and friend of Bauman's, said to Salon, "it gave me a new understanding for the kind of hell that conspiracy theories can wreak on a person’s life that I wouldn’t have understood otherwise.”

Bauman was unable, for legal reasons, to speak to Salon. But his legal complaint lays out a (relatively) simple story: As the conspiracy theories around Rich's murder started to grow louder, friends and colleagues of Rich asked Bauman to help the family, which he says he did on a volunteer basis for no payment. Soon, the right-wing rumor mill began to focus on Bauman, and accusations began to fly that he was an agent working for the DNC to help cover up Rich's murder. Bauman's suit says he was then doxxed by internet trolls (meaning that his home address and other private information was revealed) and that articles on right wing websites and social media accusing him of engaging in a cover-up have caused him emotional distress and damaged his business.

I reached out to Ed Butowsky,a financial adviser who lives in Texas and is one of the defendants in Bauman's lawsuit. Butowsky has been active on right wing sites like Gateway Pundit and WorldNetDaily in pushing the idea that Bauman was somehow "assigned" by the DNC to the Rich family. (Bauman denies this and says, in his suit, that he has never worked for the DNC.)

“It’s a nuisance lawsuit. There’s absolutely nothing behind it," Butowsky insisted, having called me back at 7:38 a.m. after a day of phone tag. "I still don’t understand this, nor many of these other lawsuits against me.”The conversation was a maddening glimpse into the rhetorical spiderwebs that form around conspiracy theories.

Butowsky is being sued not just by Bauman, but by the Rich family for allegedly ingratiating himself with them under false pretenses, in order to promote his conspiracy theory about their son. Butowsky hired a private detective, claiming he was acting on the family's behalf, but allegedly used that detective instead to push insinuations, on Fox News and other outlets, that Rich was murdered as part of a Democratic conspiracy.

Our brief conversation — under 15 minutes — was whiplash-inducing. At one point, Butowsky told me, “Fly down to Dallas. I’ll give you your Ph.D. in the Seth Rich story."

But when I followed up by asking him why he's so interested in Rich's death, he got miffed: “I don’t have a huge interest in this story.”

I noted that all these lawsuits came after Butowsky -- as he admitted in a 45-minute interview published on Gateway Pundit -- reached out to the Rich family and hired a detective to look into the case. All of which, I suggested, constituted a reasonable definition of someone "interested" in this story. Then how could he claim, I asked, to give someone a Ph.D. on a topic he claimed to have little interest in? "Because I’ve been sued by everybody," Butowsky said.

At that point, Butowsky became agitated, and insisted that instead of asking him any further questions myself, I watch the 45-minute interview at Gateway Pundit. Then he got off the phone.

That interview at Gateway Pundit is a confusing mess of digressions, self-pity and elaborate, complex insinuations that are largely impenetrable to outsiders to the Seth Rich conspiracy-theory crowd. The crux of it, as someone who had to watch it for professional reasons, is that Butowsky would like viewers to believe he was a disinterested party who, for somewhat mysterious but totally innocent reasons, ended up spending huge amounts of time ingratiating himself to this family and thousands of dollars on a private detective to look into an internet conspiracy theory.

This itself provides a major insight into how these conspiracy theories work in the age of the internet. The dense complexity, the crushing amount of content that no human being has the time to thoroughly consume, the use of insinuations to push noxious ideas while retaining plausible deniability: All this serves to disorient people such that they give up even trying to understand the truth of the situation.

“They’re undermining the ability of the average American to discern what is true, what is false, what to believe and what not to believe," Bauman said on a press call in September, regarding what he's learned from being caught up in this.

"Even if you’re not actively sharing conspiracy theories, you’re sort of exposed to it," Ryan argued, saying this leads to "the dehumanization" of the figures involved, even for right-wing audiences who don't necessarily follow or believe all the ins and outs of whatever conspiracy theory is burning up conservative media at the moment.

For instance, Ryan continued, many right-wing figures at first "weren’t comfortable sharing conspiracies about the Parkland students, calling them crisis actors." But after a month of such content swirling around the internet, the students started to seem less human, and ordinary people who consumed right-wing media became "very comfortable sharing doctored images of the students that weren’t true.”

During September's press call, Bauman attested to the power of humanization, noting that after trolls had made his phone number public, he decided to just start taking the calls when conspiracy theorists rang him. He said that most of them, after a person-to-person conversation, had dialed down their outrage and paranoia, which made him feel it's possible to "bring people back to a place where they’re thinking much more clearly about things."

Unfortunately, however, getting every conspiracy theorist on the phone to hammer it out is a task more onerous than watching every conspiracy theorist's lengthy YouTube video. Which is why these theories are now being brought to court, not just to correct false or damaging assertions, but to exact real-life consequences on people who spread them. In their suit against Fox News and Butowsky, the Riches explicitly state that they "seek to help prevent similar malicious and reckless conduct to protect future innocent victims from similarly becoming political fodder."

Whether that will work remains to be seen. In the meantime, the ecosystem supporting all these conspiracy theories, which all too often target ordinary private citizens, continues to expand through social media, blogs and internet forums. Far more must be done to protect people who, often through no fault of their own, become enmeshed in major news stories that make them into leading targets of conspiracy theorists.

==

https://www.alternet.org/legal-scholar-explains-how-sandy-hook-parents-can-achieve-justice-against-conspiracy-theorist-alex

==

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/01/25/22-times-jim-hoft-and-gateway-pundit-were-absurdly-wrong/215106

The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft said the Trump administration has promised that the site will “have a White House correspondent this year.” Hoft's website is one of the worst purveyors of false information on the internet, having repeatedly fallen for fake stories, published numerous articles with factual inaccuracies (later pulling some, but leaving others uncorrected), and pushed fact-free conspiracy theories about a wide range of topics including President Obama’s birthplace.

BACKGROUND: 

The Gateway Pundit’s Hoft Says Site Will Have White House Correspondent

Trump Heavily Promotes Gateway Pundit

Trump Is Favoring Propagandists For WH Press Access

Media Have Frequently Criticized Gateway Pundit For Errors

22 TIMES JIM HOFT AND THE GATEWAY PUNDIT WERE ABSURDLY WRONG:  

Gateway Pundit Attacked Wrong Asian Woman For “Sneaking Photos” At Hearing

Gateway Pundit Claimed Picture Of Cleveland's NBA Title Parade Was Trump Rally

Gateway Pundit Pushed Fake Story About Bus Of Paid Protesters

Gateway Pundit Fell For Hoax About Paid Protest Group

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed John Podesta Said “It’s OK For Illegals To Vote With Driver’s License”

Gateway Pundit Posted -- Then Removed -- Article Claiming Clinton Campaign Manager Deleted Tweets Because Of FBI Announcement

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed Obama Made Confederate Flag Pin In 2012

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed CNN Lightened Photo Of Fort Lauderdale Shooter

Gateway Pundit Fell For Fake Photo Of Oregon Shooter 

Gateway Pundit Claimed “Tests Show" Obama’s Birth Certificate Is “A Forgery”

Gateway Pundit Fell For Parody Article About Obama Birth Certificate

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed Michelle Obama Deleted Hillary Tweets

Gateway Pundit Fell For Twitter Joke About Postal Voter Fraud

Gateway Pundit Suggested Hillary Clinton Had “A Seizure On Camera”

Gateway Pundit Fell For Racist Hoax Video About Anti-Trump Vandalism

Gateway Pundit Lie: Trump Would Have Won Popular Vote If Not For “Illegal Vote Tally”

Gateway Pundit Thought Closed Captioning On Jumbotron Was Applause Instructions

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed Obama Was Going To "Ban Sport Fishing"

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed Obamacare Allows “‘Forced’ Home Inspections”

Gateway Pundit Suggested Obama Was “Photoshopped Into Famous Situation Room Photo” Taken During Bin Laden Raid

Gateway Pundit Fell For Fake Photo Claiming Obama Patted Melania Trump On The Butt

Gateway Pundit Fell For Fake Facebook Page To Claim Mass Shooter Was Obama Fan

Gateway Pundit’s Hoft Says Site Will Have White House Correspondent

Jim Hoft: “We've Got” The Trump Administration’s “Word That The Gateway Pundit Is Going To Have A White House Correspondent.” During a January 19 event, Gateway Pundit editor Jim Hoft announced that the Trump administration promised that his site would have a White House correspondent and Hoft said Lucian Wintrich would fill the position:

JIM HOFT: The new administration, we've been in contact with. As you know, the Gateway Pundit -- I'm based out of St. Louis, Missouri, I have the largest website in the middle America, I have the largest political website --

MIKE CERNOVICH: One million people a day. Tell them.

HOFT: During the election, I had one million readers a day come to Gateway Pundit. Thank you, thank you. And the reason was because I was telling the truth, and the mainstream media was telling the fake fucking news.

And so, today, we have a great announcement to make. We've been talking to the Trump administration -- what was that? Real news, real news, real news, real news, real news. I love you, Pamela.

So tonight, we have this announcement, we've been in contact with the Trump administration, they're going to do some things different, and we've got their word that the Gateway Pundit is going to have a White House correspondent this year, and his name is Lucian Wintrich. *Media Matters*, [1/19/17]

Lucian Wintrich Says He Will Be In White House Press Briefings “In A Few Weeks.” Twitter, [1/22/17]

Trump Heavily Promotes Gateway Pundit

BuzzFeed Analysis: Trump Tweeted Out Gateway Pundit Links 14 Times During Campaign. On December 3, BuzzFeed “analyzed all the links Donald Trump tweeted since he launched his presidential campaign” and found that he shared links to Gateway Pundit 14 times. BuzzFeed, [12/3/16]

Trump’s Campaign Website Repeatedly Cited Gateway Pundit. Trump’s campaign website cited Gateway Pundit and linked to its work in multiple instances, according to a Media Matterssearch of the site. DonaldJTrump.com, [6/16/15, 6/16/15, 6/17/15,; accessed 1/20/17]

WH Press Secretary Has Tweeted Out Gateway Pundit Links. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has tweeted out links to Gateway Pundit, including on January 11. Twitter, [1/11/17, 3/25/14, 3/25/14, 12/4/12]

Trump Is Favoring Propagandists For WH Press Access

Trump Administration Wants To Flood White House Press Briefings With Sycophants And Propagandists. *Media Matters*, [1/17/17]

Trump Team Is Building Up Alternative Pro-Trump Media Outlets. Trump and his aides have been building up pro-Trump alternatives in the media. Those outlets include Alex Jones’ Infowars, Breitbart.com, Right Side Broadcasting Network, and One America News Network. *Media Matters*, [1/17/17]

Trump Has Repeatedly Sought To Delegitimize Media Outlets He Deems Insufficiently Pro-Trump. *Media Matters*, [1/17/17]

Media Have Frequently Criticized Gateway Pundit For Errors

Wash. PostReporter Abby Ohlheiser: Gateway Pundit “In The Weeks Before The Election, Regularly Published Outright False Stories That Became Talking Points On The Conservative Internet.” *The Washington Post*, [12/7/16]

Wash. Post Reporter Callum Borchers: “‘Telling The Truth,’ Is Not, By Any Objective Measure, What The Gateway Pundit Does.” Borchers said the website is “known for spreading hoaxes” and that it would “bring a record of reckless unreliability to the White House.” *The Washington Post*, [1/20/17]

Kimberly Ross Writing For Conservative Blog RedState: Gateway Pundit Is A “Purveyor Of Fake News” And Features “Absolutely Incorrect Reporting.” RedState, [1/16/17]

Snopes.com: Gateway Pundit Is A “Factually-Challenged” And “Disreputable” Website. Snopes.com, [10/29/16, 10/29/16]

BuzzFeed Editor Craig Silverman: Gateway Pundit "Often Posts False Information." BuzzFeed, [1/24/17]

Here Are 22 Times Gateway Pundit And Jim Hoft Were Absurdly Wrong

---

Home - The Gateway Pundit

Jul 17th, 2017 10:21 am by Jim Hoft Germany, ... The Pittsburgh Post- Gazette wrote a profile on the Gateway Pundit's White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich, ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:www.thegatewaypundit.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.thegatewaypundit.com")thegatewaypundit.com

Jim Hoft, Author at The Gateway Pundit

Guest post by Joe Hoft President Trump had many classic short one-rs during his campaign. Now that his first six …

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:www.thegatewaypundit.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.thegatewaypundit.com")thegatewaypundit.com/author/jim-hoft/

Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) | Twitter

The latest Tweets from Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit). Writer- Speaker- Where Hope Made a Comeback. St. Louis, Missouri

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:twitter.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain twitter.com")https://twitter.com/gatewaypundit

22 Times Jim Hoft And The Gateway Pundit Were Absurdly Wrong

The Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft said the Trump administration has promised that the site will "have a White House correspondent this year." Hoft's website is one ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:www.mediamatters.org&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.mediamatters.org")https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/01/25/22-times-jim-hoft-and...

Jim Hoft, conservative blogger, comes out as gay after ...

Conservative blogger and The Gateway Pundit owner Jim Hoft came out as gay Monday morning in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:www.washingtontimes.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.washingtontimes.com")washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/13/jim-hoft-conservative-bl...

Jim Hoft: Dumbest Man on the Internet? - Media Matters for ...

With a few exceptions, the upper echelon of the conservative blogosphere is a mess. But despite all this stiff competition, Jim Hoft (aka Gateway Pundit) stands out ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:www.mediamatters.org&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.mediamatters.org")https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2010/09/21/jim-hoft-dumbest-man-on-t...

The Gateway Pundit - Wikipedia

The Gateway Pundit (TGP) is a conservative political blog founded by Jim Hoft after the United States presidential election in 2004. According to Hoft, it was founded ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:en.wikipedia.org&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain en.wikipedia.org")https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateway_Pundit

Jim Hoft, Author at Breitbart

On May 1st, 2012, the FBI announced that members of Occupy Cleveland were arrested for attempting several acts of terrorism, including the detonation of what they ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:www.breitbart.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.breitbart.com")breitbart.com/author/jim-hoft/

Jim Hoft: An American Warrior for Liberty - Breitbart

First, this is not a remembrance. Although Jim Hoft remains in critical condition in a St. Louis hospital, he, fortunately, is still planted firmly on this mortal ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:www.breitbart.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.breitbart.com")breitbart.com/big-government/2013/09/08/jim-hoft-an-ame...

Jim Hoft - Bio, News, Photos - Washington Times

Latest news and commentary on Jim Hoft including photos, videos, quotations, and a biography.

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim%20hoft+site:www.washingtontimes.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.washingtontimes.com")washingtontimes.com/topics/jim-hoft/

Jim Hoft's history of race-baiting and his ties to white ...

Recently, one of the members of the St. Louis Teabagger Hate Cabal is in some hot water for promoting and linking to White Supremacist websites, suc

---

banner popup etc 9 22

no lnx pix

BREAKING: Hero Sheriff Dar Leaf Sues Lawless MI AG Nessel, Dishonest MI SOS Benson For Interfering, Obstructing and Covering Up Crimes In Election Fraud Investigations, Including Machine Voting, Ballot Harvesting and Trafficking

By Patty McMurray

Published June 4, 2022

1639 Comments

Share

Tweet

Share to Gab

Telegram

Gettr

100 Percent Fed Up Exclusive – Hero and American treasure, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf and the Barry County Sheriff’s Office is suing MI Attorney General Dana Nessel, MI Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the Director of MI Bureau of Elections Jonathan Brater, the MI State Police, MI State Police Trooper Bryan Fuller and MI State Police Trooper David Geyer in their official and individual capacity.

Michigan Election Code specifically states that it is the duty of any police, sheriff or other peace officer, present and having knowledge of any violation of any of the provisions of this act to forthwith institute criminal proceedings for the punishment of such offender.”

Advertisement - story continues below

Doctor: if You Have Toenail Fungus, Do This Immediately (Genius!)

Doctors Can’t Explain It But This Fixes Toenail Fungus

MI Election law also states that a MI Sheriff is required to investigate any alleged or suspected illegal or fraudulent voter registration activity:

If a township or city clerk has knowledge that there is a probable illegal or fraudulent registration in the township or city, or in any ward or precinct of the township or city, the clerk has the power and duty to make a full investigation of the facts concerning the registration and to ascertain whether any name has been illegally or fraudulently registered. A township or city clerk is authorized and empowered to call upon the police department of the city or the sheriff of the county in which the city is located, or both, to assist in making the investigation, and the police department and the sheriff are required to render assistance if the clerk makes a request for assistance, and to furnish the clerk at his or her request with all available assistance in making the investigation.

TRENDING: TRUTH AND COURAGE UNDER FIRE: Ginni Thomas Tells Liz Cheney and Jan. 6 Committee She Still Believes 2020 Election Was Stolen

Barry County, MI Sheriff Dar Leaf

Sheriff Dar Leaf’s lawsuit addresses the lawless and obstructive actions of Attorney General Dana Nessel, who regularly mocks and threatens her political opponents, together with Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who’s blocked the efforts of citizens and law enforcement to investigate voter fraud and voter irregularities related to the 2020 election.

Advertisement - story continues below

She Turned Around And The Audience Burst Out Laughing

Investing Fuel

Photos Proving You Can't Fix Stupid

History Obsessed]

Benson has also been caught in numerous lies related to the election and like her fellow Democrat activist attorney general, she has mocked and threatened her political opponents while preventing Sheriff Dar to perform his duties and responsibilities as an elected official.

MI SOS Jocelyn Benson (D) and MI AG Dana Nessel (D)

The Barry County Sheriff is also suing MI Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s henchman,Jonathan Brater.

Jonathan Brater is Michigan’s Director of Elections, a member of the executive branch of state government, and an employee of the state. As director of elections, Mr. Brater is “vested with the powers and shall perform the duties of the secretary of state under his or her supervision, with respect to the supervision and administration of the election laws.”

Defendant Brater has no law enforcement or executive authority to encroach upon law enforcement functions of a constitutional sheriff.

Advertisement - story continues below

Homeowners Are Trading in Their Doorbell Cams for This $49 Lightbulb Camera

Best Tech Trend

California Will Cover the Cost to Install Solar if You Live in These Zip Codes

Finance Daily

15 Most Peaceful Dogs To Own

Mom Life Weekly

MI SOS Benson appointed Director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections Jonathan Brater

From the lawsuit, filed byDetroit Attorney Stefanie Lambert:

This lawsuit represents a flagrant violation of constitutional and statutory law on the part of Defendants, both named and unnamed, who took it upon themselves to bully, harass, intimidate, threaten, and ultimately to unconstitutionally usurp, and/or cause to be usurped and replaced, and/or to invade and encroach upon the powers and duties of Plaintiff as the Constitutional Sheriff of Barry County, in the performance of his constitutional and common-law duties, and in adhering to his oath of office by choosing to honor and uphold state and federal laws by exercising his constitutional and statutory duties to investigate alleged election fraud and crime.

The lawsuit states that Attorney General Nessel, who has no accountability to the Barry County Electorate, and even less authority to encroach upon the law enforcement functions of a constitutional sheriff, has committed a flagrant violation of constitutional and statutory laws by usurping the power of Sheriff Dar Leaf by obstructing, impeding, prejudging the ability of a duly elected official to conduct a criminal investigation into allegations of criminal acts related to the 2020 election and voting.

[Advertisement - story continues below

Want To Reduce Your Belly Fat? Try This Formula For 1 Week!

Add This Mineral to Your Toothpaste to Help Regrow Gums (Watch)

Defendants, without authority, encroached upon Sheriff Dar Leaf’s duties by obstructing and interfering with his lawful investigation, obstructing justice in the process, and covering up evidence and crimes, including those that they themselves were involved in and conspired with others to commit.

Defendants usurped and otherwise obstructed an elected constitutional officer and prevented him from performing his constitutional, statutory, and common-law duties as County Sheriff in accordance with the Michigan Constitution, and state and federal laws.

Defendants, without legitimate authority, also unconstitutionally and unlawfully confiscated property, documents, and information (including voting machines with its attendant software, programs, and data), all of which was required to be sealed, preserved, protected, and retained by federal law.

Defendants acted in concert or individually to transfer and reallocate the duties and powers of the Plaintiff, usurping his power and removing from him or otherwise preventing his ability to perform his constitutional and statutory duties.

Defendants acts included but are not limited to threatening, harassing, and interfering with witnesses, local government officials (including township clerks), deputies, agents, and experts, and interfering with, obstructing, and otherwise defiling investigative works and the results of such works; confiscating and/or destroying confidential files and information pertaining to an ongoing investigation; unconstitutionally and unlawfully (and without the proper procedure) usurping Plaintiff’s law enforcement functions and authorities, which are exclusively reserved to him under Michigan common law and statutory law; stepping in to quell an ongoing legitimate investigation, confiscating confidential files and documents related thereto; obstructing, harassing, and/or threatening his deputies and agents conducting the law enforcement function on his behalf as they are allowed to do exclusively and with immunity under Michigan law, confiscating voting equipment and information and data that is required by federal law to be protected and preserved.

On or about November 3, 2020, Plaintiff Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf received information that election fraud and voting machine fraud was taking place in Barry County, Michigan, before, during, and after the November 2020 election.

Pursuant to his exclusive common-law and statutory duties to investigate and ferret out criminal activity occurring within his county, Sheriff Leaf opened an investigation.

Advertisement - story continues below

[Recession Proof] Cheap Solar Panels Slash Us Homeowner's Power Bills by 65%

Free Power For US Family

Amazon Left Scrambling As Shoppers Find out About Secret Deals

Online Shopping Tools

Brilliant Bra and Panty Sets (take a Look)]

As with all such law enforcement investigations, confidentiality, protections and investigatory privileges are sacrosanct and necessary to properly perform the law enforcement function because leaks and disclosures that erode these principles reduce the likelihood that true justice and truth will prevail. As one court has noted, generally, “the law enforcement privilege plays a critical role in litigation involving the government. The purpose of the privilege… is to prevent disclosure of law enforcement techniques and procedures, to preserve the confidentiality of sources, to protect witness and law enforcement personnel, to safeguard the privacy of individuals involved in an investigation, and otherwise to prevent interference with an investigation.”

Under MCL 168.941, “It is hereby made the duty of any police, sheriff or other peace officer, present and having knowledge of any violation of any of the provisions of this act, to forthwith institute criminal proceedings for the punishment of such offender.”

Defendant Nessel has shown her inherent bias against any fraud claims or suspected criminal acts committed in relation to the investigation of rampant voter fraud that occurred during the November 2020 election, including the suspected hacking and manipulation of voting machines.

MI Dem. AG Dana Nessel

...

Defendant Nessel has also shown her mockery and disdain for Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf in her multiple “Twitter” posts and on other social media and biased “news” articles.

Even before the November 2020 election was over, Defendant Nessel “predicted” that counting of ballots would not stop and go on much longer than election day.

Defendant Nessel also urged the DOJ not to investigate Michigan election integrity and allegations of widespread fraud and voting machine anomalies.

Defendant Nessel even attacked Monica Palmer for not wanting to certify the 2020 election.

In light of these admitted biases and her mockery and disdain for Plaintiff, and all others who point out the now demonstrated problems with voter fraud, illegal ballot harvesting and trafficking, and voting machine hacking, Defendant Nessel is conflicted out and unable to ethically or legally overview, direct, authorize, or otherwise involve herself in any ostensible “investigation” of voter fraud and alleged criminal activity that may have occurred in Barry County, and in the process of that she is nonetheless forbidden from obstructing, interfering with, encroaching upon, or otherwise usurping the exclusive constitutional duties of Plaintiff County Sheriff.

Nessel preemptively threatened anyone who questioned the results of the election. In a series of two tweets, the lawless MI AG used her power as Michigan’s top law enforcement officer to warn anyone from questioning the election results saying, “Any effort to discount over half of all votes in our state is nothing short of a coup.” She then threatened the citizens she represents, “The Michigan Department of Attorney General will be ready to counter such an effort.”

Defendant / Respondent Jocelyn Benson SOS (SOS Benson), is the Secretary of State for the State of Michigan and a member of the executive branch of state government.

Secretary Benson is responsible for assuring Michigan’s local election officials conduct elections in a fair, just, and lawful manner.

Beyond this, Secretary Benson, or any other Defendant or party, has no law enforcement or executive authority to encroach upon law enforcement functions of a constitutional sheriff.

Defendant Benson has shown her inherent bias against any fraud claims or suspected criminal acts committed in relation to the investigation of rampant voter fraud that occurred during the November 2020 election, including the suspected hacking and manipulation of voting machines (finally acknowledged by the media and as demonstrated in multiple unbiased and impartial expert analyses).

Defendant Benson has also shown her mockery and disdain for Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf in her multiple “Twitter” posts and on other social media and biased “news” articles.

In light of these admitted biases and her mockery and disdain for Plaintiff and all others who point out the now demonstrated problems with voter fraud, illegal ballot harvesting, and trafficking, and voting machine hacking, Defendant Benson is conflicted and unable to ethically or legally overview, direct, authorize, or otherwise involve herself in any ostensible “investigation” of voter fraud and alleged criminal activity that may have occurred in Barry County, and in the process of that, she is nonetheless forbidden from obstructing, interfering with, encroaching upon, or otherwise usurping the exclusive constitutional duties of Plaintiff County Sheriff.

The lawsuit includes Michigan State Police:

Advertisement - story continues below

[Recession Proof] Cheap Solar Panels Slash Us Homeowner's Power Bills by 65%

Michigan State Police (MSP), is an unelected and unaccountable strong arm of the state, a partisan and politically controlled, run and operated “state police” force in every sense of the term, acts as a law enforcement branch for and on behalf of the executive branch of the state government, including Defendants AG Nessel, SOS Benson, Director Brater, and at all times relevant to the facts and circumstances described in this complaint, acted at the direction of or in collaboration with any and all of the other Defendants, named or unnamed, and who were and remain an arm of the executive branch of government.

Defendant MSP and Individual Trooper Defendants (to be named) have no law enforcement or executive authority to encroach upon law enforcement functions of a constitutional sheriff.

The lawsuit, filed on June 3, 2022, can be viewed here:

BARRY CO., MI SHERIFF DAR LEAF COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY, MANDAMUS AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF; AND DAMAGES, INCL… by 100PercentFedUp on Scribd

Advertisement - story continues below

[Americans Stunned] Recession-proof Solar Generator Slashes Power Bill by 65%

Here is one example of SOS Benson, Jonathan Brater, and the MI State Police working together to reportedly usurp the power of a duly elected clerk:

On May 23, 100 Percent Fed Up reported about Michigan’s lawless Secretary of State Benson, who has yet to pay any price for asking clerks across the state to break the law by telling them to ignore signature matching but was hell-bent on making Adams Twp. Clerk Stephanie Scott pay a steep price for not complying with voting machine updates on her timeline.

Fighting Diabetes? This Discovery Leaves Doctors Speechless!

American Diabetes Clinic

[Power Companies in Uproar!] Try Our Super Fast Set Up Solar Dish and Save Money

Free Power For US Family]

The Adams Twp. Clerk became the target of SOS Benson when she refused to allow updates to her voting machine over concerns that election data from the 2020 election that, by law, is supposed to be preserved for 22 months will be compromised or, worse, erased.

In a threatening Oct. 25, 2021 letter from Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office written by Director of Elections Jonathon Braeter with a copy sent to Dana Nessel’s office, the Adams Twp. Clerk was “directed” to “provide immediate access to all election equipment and records, including tabulator, voter assist terminals, absentee ballot applications, ballot envelopes, and polling place materials. They also informed her that her access to the Qualified Voter File would be suspended until further notice and that she would be charged with a misdemeanor if she refused to comply.

On October 29, only four days after receiving the letter from SOS Benson’s office, Sergeant Barkley of the Michigan State Police, apparently acting at the behest of Michigan’s partisan Attorney General Dana Nessel and allegedly at the direction of the dishonest and lawless Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, seized the township’s election tabulator from a locked cabinet in the office of Adams Township’s Clerk, Stephanie Scott.

A “search warrant” was procured seeking a scan unit for a Hart inter civic tabulator used in the November 2020 election and to be used for an upcoming local election being held in the township on November 2.

Letter to Scott.

According to Ms. Scott’s attorney, Stephanie Lambert, the County Treasurer entered the Clerk’s office and unlocked the cabinet to allow Sergeant Barkley to remove the tabulator and other items. Lambert explained, “The treasurer has no authority to go into the Clerk’s office to open the cabinet.”

At 2:52 pm, the Clerk’s attorney received a message from Sergeant Barkley saying he had what he was looking for and that her client did not need to come to unlock the cabinet in her personal office.

Adams Twp. Clerk Stephanie Scott

Ms. Scott’s attorney asked the state police sergeant whether the Treasurer had opened the cabinet without her client’s permission, which had obviously occurred.  She also asked if the sergeant had any questions for her client, to which he replied, “I will come up with a list of questions and get with you in the next few business days.”  When asked for a copy of the affidavit, which would have to have been presented to the judge who authorized the search, Sergeant Barkley refused to provide it and said that she would have to obtain it from the court where the warrant and affidavit would be filed.  In order to obtain a search warrant, the requesting entity or individual officer has to sign an affidavit to explain the probable cause basis for the search warrant, which must then be reviewed and approved by a judge.  In this case, the warrant was presented to and signed by magistrate Megan Stevenson for the 2nd District Court in Hillsdale County.

Stephanie Scott, who was elected to run her township’s elections, has been officially stripped of her election responsibilities and is now facing a recall over her actions.

On May 13, the County Election board approved the language for the recall petition of Stephanie Scott. The recall is based on Jonathan Braden’s letter, which Lambert says is unlawful. Lambert is appealing the recall language that is not accurate or clear and has filed suit against defendant Hillsdale County Clerk Marney Kast, who made the resolution for the petition and for essentially usurping Scott’s authority.

Sheriff Dar Leaf is seeking Temporary Injunctive Relief to:

prevent Defendants from further usurping and interfering with the performance of his duties and his investigations;

prevent Defendants from seizing and keeping property and information and data created during, related to, or subject of said investigations, and order Defendants to return all such information;

prevent Defendants from tampering with or otherwise adulterating the property and evidence that it unlawfully confiscated;

prevent Defendants from harassing, threatening, seizing, or otherwise interfering with by interviewing and confiscation of their property all deputies and agents lawfully engaged by the Plaintiff to assist him in conducting his investigation;

prevent Defendants from obstructing justice, interfering with, and/or destroying all investigatory confidences and privileges;

prevent Defendants from leaking information related to Plaintiff’s investigation to the press and to further refrain from commenting or otherwise alerting the public of the nature of such confidential investigatory information as is protected by law; enter an order pursuant to MCR 3.310, enjoining Defendants from carrying out or otherwise causing to be carried out any and all tampering, deletion, erasing, or adulteration of the data and evidence related to the general election of November 2020 as required by federal law, and order that all evidence related to the investigation that is in their possession be returned to Plaintiff;

Order Defendants to show cause as to why its proposed actions are authorized by law and are not ultra vires of their constitutional and statutory authority, and thereby in contravention of and directly violative of Plaintiff’s exercise of his constitutional and statutory duties as a constitutional, elected official of a known legal character with certain duties and powers provided by law, and beholden to his electorate;

Order that a hearing be held on the merits of this Complaint wherein it shall be determined whether the Defendants must honor their respective constitutional, statutory and legal obligations vis-à-vis Plaintiff in his official capacity as a constitutional officer and perform those actions and procedures deemed necessary to bring about compliance by Defendants with state and federal law and to restore to Plaintiff his ability to perform his independent duties and functions; whether Defendants must further refrain from unconstitutionally encroaching upon the Plaintiff’s constitutional office in violation of the doctrine of separation of powers and the exercise of his exclusive powers, and such other relief as this Honorable Court deems just and equitable under the law.

It’s about time a sheriff in Michigan stood up to Michigan’s top two elected officials whose job it is to serve all of the citizens of the state of Michigan. Instead, they have chosen to ignore their demands to investigate the 2020 election, and, even worse, to obstruct and threaten one of the only duly elected sheriffs in the state of Michigan who is brave enough to investigate the 2020 election.

---