Fogbow

Desperate to overturn his election loss, Donald Trump and his team spun a sprawling voter-fraud fiction, casting two rank-and-file election workers, a mother and her daughter, as the main villains. The women endured months of death threats and racist taunts – and one went into hiding.

Two Georgia election workers who became the target of conspiracy theories around the 2020 election are suing The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website that published false information about them as part of a sweeping effort to sow doubt about the integrity of the vote.

The election workers, Ruby Freeman, a retired 911 call center worker, and her daughter, Shaye Moss, allege in the lawsuit that Jim and Joe Hoft, twin brothers who operate and write for The Gateway Pundit, conducted “a campaign of lies” that “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.”

Freeman and her daughter became central figures in some of the many conspiracy theories that circulated among conservatives in the months after the election. Other subjects of similar theories — most notably companies that make voting machines — have also launched lawsuits targeted at media companies that spread misleading or outright evidence-free claims about their roles in the election.

spiduh wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 5:41 pm Nota, I've linked the actual lawsuit here fwiw.

More than a year after Donald Trump lost the presidency, election officials across the country are facing a growing barrage of claims that the vote was not secure and demands to investigate or decertify the outcome, efforts that are eating up hundreds of hours of government time and spreading distrust in elections.

The ongoing attack on the vote is being driven in part by well-funded Trump associates, who have gained audiences with top state officials and are pushing to inspect protected machines and urging them to conduct audits or sign on to a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 results. And the campaign is being bolstered by grass-roots energy, as local residents who have absorbed baseless allegations of ballot fraud are now forcing election administrators to address the false claims.

The fallout has spread from the six states where Trump sought to overturn the outcome in 2020 to deep-red places such as Idaho, where officials recently hand-recounted ballots in three counties to refute claims of vote-flipping, and Oklahoma, where state officials commissioned an investigation to counter allegations that voting machines were hacked.

State and local officials said no one has presented actual evidence that rampant fraud tainted the 2020 election, and numerous ballot reviews and legal proceedings have affirmed that the vote was secure. Yet they and their staffs have been forced into a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole, debunking a steady stream of false allegations only to see similar claims emerge again from other groups or in other states.

The onslaught is exhausting and troubling, officials said, as they launch preparations for the 2022 midterm elections — and is further eroding faith in the nation’s voting systems.

“If we want to continue to provide safe, secure and accessible elections, constantly running down absurd conspiracy theories is not sustainable,” said Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “For many election workers, this has become a full-time job.”

► Show Spoiler

In North Carolina this fall, local activists and at least two Republican lawmakers sent the State Board of Elections allegations, including an outlandish claim that all 100 county election systems were hacked in 2020 and thousands of votes for Trump switched to Joe Biden. Election staffers and the state’s cybersecurity team compiled dozens of pages of responses disproving the charges, one at a time.

And in Marion County, Fla., this fall, some local residents conducted their own canvass of 2020 voters and presented their findings to election officials, claiming that many who cast ballots were “ghost” voters who didn’t actually live at the addresses listed on their registrations.

As in other instances, their claims were debunked. Wesley Wilcox (R), the Marion County elections supervisor, said the activists made the “absurd” claim that the number of voters who were registered but did not cast ballots in 2020 was evidence of fraud. He noted that the objectors did not provide the name of a single voter who was improperly registered at the time of last year’s election.

“They’re trying to prove voter fraud off of nonexistent issues,” Wilcox said.

Even as election officials rebut the growing conspiracy theories, the demands from some of those pushing false claims are escalating — and their rhetoric is becoming more extreme.

On social media, Frank recently began calling for prison or “firing squads” for those who do not agree to hear him out. On Saturday, he wrote that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who has refused to entertain his claims, should face a jury “capable of dispensing capital punishment.”

In an interview this week, Benson said she views the latest escalation as an assault on democracy. She said she intends to spend next year fighting back, and urging Americans to do the same.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html

John Cox
Even asking the question is a conspiracy
Stop asking questions

Me
No, just take "FOR THE 200TH TIME IT'S NOT MAN MADE!!!!" for an answer.
Asking questions is worthless if you are not interested in the answer.

John Cox
I'm not seeking an answer.
I'm seeking failure of governments.
All of them.

me
plenty of exciting opportunities to live free in places like Somalia and Libya. Let us know how it works out.

John Cox
It's OK if you're scared.
Freedom is dangerous AF

Me
Sorry, I don't want to argue with someone who is relying on Goverment control of Standards by using things like "the Internet" and "Electricity." Not to mention having accepted enforced Goverment homogenization of communication symbols by the act of "reading."

Two election workers who counted votes for the 2020 presidential election filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday against the parent company of One America News, senior staff at the far-right TV network and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as a personal lawyer to former president Donald Trump.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, who worked in Fulton County, Ga., allege that One America News and Giuliani, who frequently appears on the network, knowingly spread misinformation about them, including falsehoods that they logged illegal ballots for Joe Biden in the election.

The two women “have become objects of vitriol, threats, and harassment … because of a campaign of malicious lies,” their attorneys wrote in the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Deliberate efforts to spread disinformation about America’s election workers undermine the integrity of American elections … and accordingly, threaten democracy.”

Giuliani, One America News and its senior staff named in the lawsuit — chief executive Robert Herring, president Charles Herring and chief White House correspondent Chanel Rion — did not immediately return requests for comment late Thursday.

Rudy Giuliani attacks 'fascist' Fox News for not inviting him on: 'They seem frightened of George Soros!'

Brad Reed
December 27, 2021

Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Monday attacked Fox News for no longer inviting him onto their programs.

While appearing on "Real America's Voice," the former New York mayor said that Fox News was ungrateful to him for the support he'd given them throughout the years, and said it was wrong that he was no longer a regular on the network.

"They forget their friends pretty damn fast!" Giuliani charged. "The thing I resent most is they won't tell me why! I'm not being told why I'm not being allowed on!"

In fact, Fox News reportedly stopped having Giuliani on because his false statements about Dominion Voting Systems were leaving them liable to defamation lawsuits.


https://www.rawstory.com/rudy-giuliani- ... 656167290/

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:16 pm

In fact, Fox News reportedly stopped having Giuliani on because his false statements about Dominion Voting Systems were leaving them liable to defamation lawsuits.

raison de arizona wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:23 pm

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:16 pm

In fact, Fox News reportedly stopped having Giuliani on because his false statements about Dominion Voting Systems were leaving them liable to defamation lawsuits.

I don't doubt that is the _real_ reason, but FWIW, my recollection is that FoxNews stated that Giuliani just wasn't relevant anymore as the reason.

Jim wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:34 pm He's no longer the useful idiot he once was for them.

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:49 pm His mustache is…interesting.

raison de arizona wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 4:47 pm The Villages appears to be a hive of lawlessness and voter fraud.