Two Georgia pollsters, who were at the center of a fake news Maelstrom last year, sued the infamous right-wing website Gateway Pundit and its founder James Hoft for defamation and willful emotional distress.
Despite a layout that will make your eyes bleed and more pop-up ads than a dial-up-era porn portal, Gateway Pundit is one of the most popular sites on the internet, delivering short posts full of unconfirmed flaps and random capitalization to millions of people every year. Höft was permanently fired from Twitter in February 2021 for posting false information about the election, including a story accusing Georgia Foreign Secretary Brad Raffensperger’s nonexistent brother “Ron” of working for a Chinese company. And the site was recently dismantled by Google AdSense for whipping up ongoing COVID misinformation.
Together with his twin brother Joseph, who is also a defendant in the case, Hoft wrote numerous articles in which Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a long-time election worker in Georgia, and her mother Ruby Freeman, who helped out on a temporary basis, illegally counted a “suitcase” fraudulent ballot papers to swing the state for Joe Biden. The story caught fire in the MAGA world after a Trump campaign officer played a heavily edited video at the Senate hearing that appeared to show Freeman pulling a stack of ballot papers from under a table in an empty room and through the tab ran. In his infamous phone call with Raffensperger, Trump even referred to Freeman 18 times by name and demanded that he “find 11,780 votes, one more than we did because we won the state”.
The allegation was immediately debunked, with several state officials explaining that the count stopped and the room was evacuated at 10 p.m. after a urinal overflowed the Secretary of State’s decree. Nobody ordered the election observers to leave, they had simply assumed that it was all over for today and gone home. Indeed, there was no law requiring election officials to count for an audience.
Nonetheless, Gateway Pundit released several stories claiming the video proved electoral workers guilty of election fraud and it was the first to doxxt the plaintiffs – a fact it repeatedly boasted of in its coverage.
From December 3rd:
Her name is Ruby Freeman.
And she made the mistake of promoting her purse on her desk the same night she was embroiled in a massive election fraud.
On her T-shirt it says “Lady Ruby” and on her handbag it says “LaRuby”, this is her company.
This wasn’t a very smart move.
Your company is called “LaRuby’s Unique Treasures”.
It’s on their LinkedIn page!
In a December 4th article entitled “BREAKING: CROOKED GEORGIA ELECTIONS SUPERVISER” [sic] The pulling of suitcases with ballot papers from the lower table was filmed – RUBY’S DAUGHTER! (Video).
As indicated in the complaint, the Höfts were aware of the harassment these women would experience after they were publicly accused of fraudulent elections, and their only concern was that the howler monkeys hit the right target.
“Note: Please do not confuse this with a similar shop in Snellville!” They cautioned readers.
And they did it. Moss and Freeman were persistently harassed for months for forcing them out of their homes for fear of their lives, as reported by Reuters in a lengthy article that echoes the allegations repeated in the complaint. On several occasions, people have surrounded their homes and attempted to penetrate in order to stage “citizen arrest”. They received hundreds of harassing calls and emails, often containing racist abuse [his] n – r mom. “
Freeman and Moss are suing a state court in Missouri, where Gateway Pundit is headquartered, for damages and punitive damages.
Of course, the Höft brothers took the opportunity for grift to start a fundraising campaign on the popular crowdfunding site of the alt-right site GiveSendGo. By the time of this release, they had raised $ 100,000 and well exceeded their target of $ 75,000.
The world is a strange and terrifying place.
Freeman v. Höft
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore, where she writes on law and politics.
