Photo of Jim Hoft, publisher of The Gateway Pundit, by Ben Jackson/Getty Images for SiriusXM.
Two women who were Fulton County, Georgia election workers during the 2020 election have filed a defamation lawsuit against right-wing website The Gateway Pundit, the site’s founder and publisher Jim Hoft, and his twin brother who contributes articles,Joe Hoft. The lawsuit relates to false information they published that led to the women being targeted with death threats, racist slurs, and other harassment.
As The New York Times noted in their reporting on the lawsuit, it was “among the first to be filed by individual election workers who found themselves unwittingly dragged into the alternate universe of far-right media that claimed, and still does, that [former President] Donald J. Trump won last year’s presidential election.”
The complaint was filed by Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss in St. Louis, Missouri, where Jim Hoft resides (the website’s name is inspired by St. Louis’ landmark monument, the Gateway Arch), and says the defendants targeted the women in a “campaign of lies” by falsely accusing them of committing ballot fraud.
Gateway Pundit started running dozens of such articles in December 2020 and continued through last month, accusing the women of working to steal the presidential election in Georgia from Trump.
“The lies about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss have not only devastated their personal and professional reputations but instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that have forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety,” stated the complaint.
Jim Hoft was permanently banned from Twitterin February of this year after a long-running habit of posting unproven claims, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and just flat-out lies.
The complaint notes Gateway Pundit’s poor reputation for accuracy, describing the defendants as “the leading purveyors of false information in the United States, spreading baseless conspiracy theories and disinformation for fame and fortune,” and noting that “The Gateway Pundit has been identified as the top producer of false content during and after the 2020 presidential election” (emphasis in original).
The Hofts’ conspiracy peddling isn’t happening on some unknown remote corner of the interwebs, either; as David French noted in a Twitter thread discussing this lawsuit, Gateway Pundit is “one of the top websites in right-wing media.”
And if you think, “Who cares about Gateway Pundit? It’s fringe, troll right,” remember that it’s one of the top websites in right-wing media. /3 pic.twitter.com/qTDXuirSCv
— David French (@DavidAFrench) December 2, 2021
They rake in millions of views every month and the ad revenue that follows all those virtual eyeballs.
The “unverified and uncorroborated information” Gateway Pundit published attacking Freeman and Moss “was refuted in real-time by Georgia’s statewide election officials, many of whom are elected Republicans,” said the women’s legal counsel in a press release announcing the lawsuit, but “[t]hey continued to publish these untruths long after they were proven to be false.”
The women’s attorneys sent a letter to the defendants describing the untrue allegations in detail and requesting a retraction. At the time the complaint was filed, the posts still remained up on the website.
The damage was exacerbated by the website publishing Freeman and Moss’ names and photos, and the complaint describes the harrowing “violent, racist threats and harassment of all kinds” the two women, who are Black, received:
At the height of Defendants’ campaign of disinformation, Ms. Freeman, at the recommendation of the FBI, fled her home and did not return for two months. On January 6, 2021, a crowd on foot and in vehicles surrounded Ms. Freeman’s house. Ms. Freeman was forced to shutter her online business when social media became impossible to navigate. Ms. Moss has suffered personal and professional consequences in her ongoing work on Fulton County elections. On at least two occasions, strangers showed up at her grandmother’s home and attempted to push into the house in order to make a “citizens’ arrest.” Fulton County elections’ general email address would forward incoming emails to Ms. Moss and many of her colleagues, filling her workplace with harassing messages.
…As a result of Defendants’ ongoing campaign, both women are afraid to live normal lives. Ms. Freeman is fearful when she hears her name called in public; Ms. Moss now fears risking even a visit to the grocery store and must get her groceries delivered instead. Defendants have inflicted and continue to inflict severe and ongoing emotional, and economic damage on both plaintiffs.
“I want the defendants to know that my daughter and I are real people who deserve justice,” Freeman said in a statement, “and I never want them to do this to anyone else.”
